Thursday, February 11, 2010

Garbage Disposals

I have a real problem with garbage disposals. We've had nothing but issues with our garbage disposal and pipes in the kitchen since we moved in 16 years ago to our house. Before that, I seem to remember issues with the condo surrounding the garbage disposal. I hate them.

Where I grew up in Canada we never had a garbage disposal. We put the egg shells and coffee grounds in the vegetable garden, left over meat products went to the fox, veggie waste to the raccoons and bears and fat was either saved for frying later or put out for the chickadees in winter. They need fat to keep warm in those 40 below temperatures.

Why would I write to you now about garbage disposals? Dena loves garbage disposals. She seems to believe that everything should go down them. One time she put about 2 pounds of left over cooked halibut down our disposal. Sure, it ground it up fine but it glued itself to the pipes requiring an emergency plumbing call. You have never smelt anything so nasty as halibut that's been sitting in the pipes for over 30 hours. It came out looking like a granite mining core but smelling much worse.

I discovered our latest incident when the washer drain started overflowing onto our new kitchen floor. Since we recently had our kitchen redone all the old corroded galvanized pipes were replaced with nice new wide PVC with our contractor routing them for optimum slideage of sludge. I thought our (aka my) problems were over. Being that we're saving every penny I bought a drain router kit in lieu of calling a plumber. What a filthy job that was. After much rootering I pulled out about two cups of....wait for it.......................................brussel sprouts.

My dear readers, do not put lettuce, onions, or any skins down your garbage disposal because all these leafy type things do is stick to the side of your pipes like the cholesterol in your arteries clogging and narrowing the flow. Just don't do it.

Below are a couple websites to encourage you to find other ways of disposing of waste:
Being green
proper care and feeding

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Brussel sprouts? No wonder you found them in the garbage! Stick to the finer vegetables & your drains won't be clogged & your "internal human tubing" will function without clogging as well.

Jamie Lee Curtis