July 6, 2016  Easy Trick to Keep Your Garbage Disposal from Breaking

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Here is an easy tip to keep your garbage disposal from clogging and breaking down.  Ready? Don’t use it! 

Or at least, avoid using it as much as possible. Start composting most of your kitchen scraps instead, and you will be helping the environment, and making yourself some beautiful fertilizer for future gardening endeavors.

Kitchen composting might sound more difficult than it actually is. Personally, I find the bowl method works best. It is cheap because I don’t have to buy a kitchen composter, and its presence leaves me with few excuses to NOT compost.  

How it works is, you just keep a medium-sized bowl with a cover on your kitchen counter or wherever you do the most chopping of produce.  Then,when you are preparing food, throw in the vegetable and fruit scraps. (It is generally advised to not include meat and dairy items in compost) When the bowl gets full, carry it outside and dump the contents into your compost bin.

Amazingly, some of the items that you’re NOT supposed to put down your garbage disposal will actually contribute to having great compost for your garden.  These include:

  • Eggshells
  • Coffee grounds
  • Celery and other stringy vegetables, such as chard, artichokes and leeks
  • Starchy vegetable trimmings, such as potato peels and ends of root vegetables
  • Fruit pits and melon rinds

Basically, you can compost just about any other vegetable or fruit kitchen scraps, as well as tea bags.  

And voila!  You end up with a freely running garbage disposal and a healthy compost pile.  It’s a win-win all around!

by See Jane Drill, Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved