How to Clean a Garbage Disposal That Smells Bad

Oh no. The kitchen stinks. You’ve cleared out the fridge, checked pantries, and taken out the trash and yet still those smells persist. What’s left? Well, take a whiff. Do the odors seem centralized over the sink? It might be the garbage disposal giving you grief. Don’t worry! Fixing a smelly garbage disposal is a quick, easy, and affordable process. You may not even need to buy any specialty soaps or tabs to do the job. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to fix a garbage disposal that’s not smelling fresh. 

In the market to fix an appliance after you clean your disposal? Search below using your specific appliance model number to identify the exact part needed:

Why Does My Garbage Disposal Stink?

Your disposal grinds up food matter with impellers (not blades), turning all that material into paste. While a disposal is generally pretty great at self-cleaning, it’s still possible that food remnants may not make it all the way through the disposal or your pipes. Lingering food matter will eventually start to rot, leading to some pretty nasty smells.

• Rancid food smells are the most common, and are caused by the remnants of food debris. Grease and other fats can also adhere to the sides of the disposal and pipes, even if you aren’t running the disposal at the time, which is why you should never dispose of grease or oil in this way.
  
• Mold or mildew smells are also common. Your pipes are cool, dark, and damp, a perfect breeding ground for mold and bacteria. We’ll give you some tips on how to get rid of these smells below.

Even if you’re doing everything right, unpleasant smells can still sneak up on you. You’re going to have to clean that disposal eventually. Let’s take a look at how to rescue your kitchen from rancid odors.

How To Fix A Garbage Disposal That Smells Bad

Cleaning your garbage disposal is a simple process that you can complete with materials you probably already have on hand! It should only take a few minutes, too. Just make sure you don’t use any harsh chemical cleaners. Chemicals like bleach can cause food debris to harden, exacerbating your problems.

Materials

1. Dish soap
2. Scrub wand or cleaning toothbrush
3. Tongs or needle-nosed pliers (optional)
4. 1 cup of ice cubes
5. ½ cup of kosher or rock salt
6. Baking soda & vinegar, if the smell is really persistent
7. Some fresh citrus peels (optional)

How To Clean Your Garbage Disposal in 8 Steps

1. Cut the power to the disposal completely before beginning. You do not want to risk serious injury, so make sure that the disposal is unplugged before you start poking around. You can probably unplug it from an outlet beneath the sink, but you may need to go to your house’s circuit breaker to turn it off completely.
   Remember to confirm that the disposal is off before proceeding. Try flipping it on and see if it starts up.
2. With the disposal off, clean around the drain and the visible part of the disposal with a scrub brush and some dish soap. Grab a flashlight to help you better see everything. You may be able to get rid of surface gunk this way, or at least remove any large chunks you find.
   Only do this while the disposal is unpowered and never stick your hand down the sink. Use a scrubber wand or toothbrush for cleaning and tongs or needle-nosed pliers to remove bits of food.
3. Restore power to the disposal. For this next part, you’re going to be running the disposal, so go ahead and plug it back in or flip the breaker back on.
4. Stopper the drain and fill the sink with warm soapy water. Once you’ve collected enough water that your sink is about halfway full, unplug the drain and run the disposal. By completely flooding the disposal with soapy water while it’s running, you’re ensuring that all the nooks and crannies get soaped up and cleaned.
5. Use ice and salt to do some abrasive cleaning. Put a cup of ice and then a half cup of salt down the disposal while both the disposal and the cold water are running. Let that go for about a minute. The ice being crushed up will loosen up food while the salt acts as a scrub for the impellers and sides of the disposal.

6. Optionally, you may also want to make a vinegar and baking soda paste to scrub at the visible parts of the disposal. As with above you should only do this while the disposal is totally unpowered, and never stick your hands in the garbage disposal.

   If you’ve still got troubles, it’s time for baking soda and vinegar. For this step, you don’t need to run the disposal until after the cleaning agents have done their thing. Start with a half cup of baking soda, then add a cup of vinegar. The two will react, foaming up and fizzling to help clean and kill bacteria. Give this combination about 15 minutes to go to work.This method is particularly useful if what you’re smelling is a moldy or mildew-y odor.

7. Do one final soap and water flush. Repeat step 4 for one final flush of soapy water to get everything out.
8. Optionally, finish up with a bit of citrus. If you’ve got a lemon, lime, or orange handy, you can toss the peels down the disposal, let it run for about 5 to 10 seconds after you’re sure the peel has been completely ground up. This should create a pleasant citrus scent, good for masking the smell of vinegar.

Preventing Smells From Taking Over Your Garbage Disposal

The best offense is a good defense! Stop bad smells from permeating your kitchen by making sure you’re using your garbage disposal correctly.

1. Make sure you’re running the disposal long enough. Once it sounds like the food debris has been ground up, let the garbage disposal continue to run for another 5 seconds with the faucet on. This should ensure that any food remnants have been flushed through.
2. Always run the faucet when you’re using the disposal. This ensures that food matter is getting flushed through.
3. Avoid putting certain things in the disposal. Potato peels, banana peels, eggshells, coffee grounds, and stringy veggies like celery and corn husks can all potentially get stuck to the garbage disposal impellers (those are the things that grind up the food) or the pipe itself, causing clogs and — yep! — bad smells. Luckily, many of these items make for pretty decent additions to your garden’s compost pile. A lot of places claim that certain foods mentioned above will sharpen your disposal’s “blades.” There are no blades in a garbage disposal, so this is untrue. In a disposal, food is ground up using impellers and a grinding ring. There’s nothing to actually sharpen. By loading coffee grounds and eggshells into your disposal, you only risk gumming up the works.
4. Don’t run hard items like fruit pits or bones through your disposal. Not only could chunks get caught and cause clogs, hard items could splinter and damage parts of the machinery. If the disposal doesn’t break outright, it could make it less effective.
5. Don’t pour grease or fats down the drain. Make sure you properly dispose of grease and oils and don’t ever pour them down the drain. Fats will stick to your pipes, clog, and smell awful as they turn rancid. If some grease does wind up going down your drain, run some hot water to keep it moving down the line.
6. Clean the disposal regularly. You don’t need to do a full multi-step clean every time, but doing just one of the steps above regularly will help you to avoid having to do all three methods at once.
7. Avoid using harsh chemical cleaners. Aside from the fact that harsh chemical cleaners can potentially damage your pipes or your disposal, certain chemicals could react with fats or other food debris still stuck in there, hardening them and making them more difficult to remove.
8. Remember, citrus alone will only mask odors. It doesn’t actually clean anything. If you run lemon peels through the disposal, you’ll mask smells for a time, but if you haven’t also taken steps to clean your disposal, those smells will come right back.
9. You may just need to replace your disposal. Garbage disposals typically last around 10 years. Within that time, parts can start to wear down, leading to bigger chunks of food getting through, causing clogs. If your disposal is more than 10 years old and bad smells are just one symptom alongside other issues like frequent clogging or unusual noises, it may be time to replace your disposal.

Wrapping Up

You don’t need to let a smelly sink put a damper on dinnertime. With this guide, your kitchen should be back to smelling lemony fresh, lickety-split! Now that you have the tools to avoid unwanted odors in the future, keep AppliancePartsPros.com in mind for other tips, tutorials, and guides on how to keep your home in tip-top shape. If you ever have any questions about how to replace appliance parts, we’re happy to lend a hand through our site LiveChat or give us a call!