Unclogging a Garbage Disposal...without the need of a Plumber!
Hope everyone is having a good weekend! This beautiful Saturday morning, my husband and I decided to make ourselves a veggie omelet for breakfast. Before we knew it, our garbage disposal had clogged up from all the coffee, veggie and eggshell remains. Ugh...not a good way to start the weekend!
I was pleasantly surprised that unclogging the disposal was not as difficult as I imagined. Mostly thanks to my husband, who knew exactly what to do. So I thought it would be helpful to do a DIY on the steps we took to unclog our disposal. The entire process took about 30 minutes and NO tools were needed!
Disclaimer: We are not professional plumbers, the below steps are what has worked for us.
CUT POWER
First things first, we made sure to unplug the garbage disposal from the electrical outlet and cut the power from the breaker panel.
EMPTY CABINET
We then removed everything from underneath the kitchen sink. This was pretty easy since I have everything organized in my dollar store plastic bins! If you haven't checked out my blog where I organize under the kitchen sink in 3 easy steps, check it out here!
PREPARE
Next, we placed a towel under the sink to protect the cabinet from any water splatter and placed a large bowl underneath the pipes that we will be working with.
UNASSEMBLE
Now this is where the fun begins. We slowly started unscrewing the pipe ring on the pipe furthest away from the disposal. These steps were repeated as we moved to the pipe fittings closer to the disposal. Each time we removed a pipe fitting, we made sure to have the large bowl right underneath to catch any water or debris. And good thing we did, because we had a lot of water come rushing out. We continued on to the third pipe to make sure that we got all of the debris out.
CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN
Once we had removed all of the pipes, we were able to clearly see the issue. We were able to remove the debris by pushing it out with a screwdriver and rinsing with water. Also, taking advantage that all of the pipes were now free, we took this opportunity to clean all three pipes before we assembled them back together. Using soapy water and paper towels, we cleaned all three pipes.
REASSEMBLE
We then began to put everything back together in the same order that we removed the pipes. No tools were required to put the pipes back together, we just hand tightened all the pipe fittings.
TEST
After all the pipes had been put together, we slowly turned on the water and ran it for a couple of minutes to look for any leaks and flush out any remaining debris.
Yay! No leaks!
I then gave the sink a scrub with baking soda and cut a few lemon slices down the garbage disposal with ice cubes to clean and freshen the drain. I finished off the sink by wiping it down with orange oil to get it glistening clean again. If you are curious about how I use orange oil around the house, click here!
Hope you guys find this post helpful!
