Holiday Care for Your Garbage Disposal in Tacoma, WA

For many people, Thanksgiving is the biggest meal their kitchen sees all year long. With the busy schedules that families follow nowadays, there isn’t time to plan and prepare multi-course meals throughout the week.

Instead, Thanksgiving dinner is reserved as the one big meal for the year and, sometimes that can mean being ill-prepared.

Just like you wouldn’t misuse your electrical system, you should never misuse your plumbing system – even if it is for the sake of saving time.

Here are a couple of simple rules to follow when preparing and cleaning up your Thanksgiving dinner this year:

• Pour grease and oil into a can or jar rather than down the drain. Collecting oil in a can or jar can save your drain system from a serious clog. After you have poured it into a jar or can, take a look at the oil in a few minutes. You will notice that, while it went in a liquid, it is now a solid. Imagine that solid mass in your kitchen drain. Oil and grease are not water soluble so, running tap water down the drain after it is not an effective way to get it to move through the pipes. Instead, avoid pouring it down the drain at all and opt for a collection method that will allow you to throw it in the garbage once it has cooled.
• Collect vegetable peels in a plastic or paper bag and throw them in the garbage. Never put vegetable peels down the drain or garbage disposal. These items are too thick and pulpy. The starch in them will dry into a thick crust inside of your drain pipes and create a layer of build-up that will catch other solid particles and eventually lead to a clog. Instead, peel your carrots, potatoes, squash, apples, and other produce over a paper or plastic bag and throw them in the garbage can.
• If you are making brunch for your guests make sure to put the egg shells in the garbage can rather than in the garbage disposal. Also, any broken eggs should be thrown away and not put in the drain. Egg shells are porous and fragile, but they can build-up inside of your garbage disposal and around the blades causing the system to not work as well as it should.

The plumbing in your kitchen might handle some rough stuff, but the system itself is actually very fragile. It was designed with certain actions in mind, and anything outside of those actions can cause a serious issue.