You must have heard about the effectiveness of lemons at cleaning and freshening up drains. Since lemons are heavily used in cleaning drains and garbage disposals are part of the drainage system, you must be wondering, is it ok to put lemons down the garbage disposal? The answer to this question is yes, lemons are 100% safe to use in your garbage disposal.

If you want to use them, commercial appliances repair professionals recommend you slice the lemon into a few pieces, then squirt a few drops of the lemon juice into the opening of the garbage disposal and let it sit there for a few minutes to loosen anything that might have caked onto the disposal blades.

You should then run water in the sink and let it flow into the disposal opening. Then, turn on the disposal and drop in the lemon chunks until they are pulverized. The citrus juice and the rind texture will clean the garbage disposal blades and freshen the disposal.

Although lemons are safe to put in the garbage disposal, it doesn’t mean you can put anything down there. There are plenty of materials you shouldn’t allow in your garbage disposal. They include:

Coffee grounds

Although they appear fine, coffee grounds are densely packed, and they are almost paste-like when you take them out of a filter. If you make the mistake of putting them in the garbage disposal, you end up with a pile of gunky sediment in your drains, increasing the chances of a clog.

Eggshells

You must have come across information that eggshells help with sharpening garbage disposal blades, but this isn’t the case. We can say the garbage disposal has impellers rather than blades that grind food waste down rather than chop it up with a blender.

When is the last time you used an eggshell to sharpen your kitchen knife? If you have never used it, it means it’s ineffective at sharpening the garbage disposal blades.

To add salt to injury, the eggshells have membranes that can easily get wrapped around the grinder, creating a host of problems for your appliance.

Potato peels

There is no upside to throwing potato peels in your garbage disposal. When you do it, two things can happen: the peels maybe thin that they slip past the disposal and end up in the drains increasing the chances of your drains clogging, or the peels might also get ground up and turn into a starchy paste in the garbage disposal.

In the event the paste makes its way into the pipes, it might cause serious blockages that are difficult to get rid of.

Animal bones

The garbage disposal appears tough on a casual look, such that you have the impression you can use it to grind almost anything, but oh boy…how wrong is this? Despite the tough outlook, the garbage disposal isn’t designed for grinding exceptionally hard items.

Bones are one of the hardest items you find in the kitchen, and when you frequently grind them, you significantly reduce the lifespan of the disposal unit.

While bones are destructive to the garbage disposal, don’t panic when you accidentally drop a small fish or chicken bone down there as the garbage disposal can handle it. While this is the case, anything larger than the bone will spin around the disposal, damaging the grinding mechanism so ensure no large bones get into the unit.

Rice, pasta, and bread

These things have one thing in common—they absorb water and expand, which can easily lead to clogs. While this is the case, commercial garbage disposal repair Springfield professionals advise against panicking when you leave some spaghetti in the disposal as the system can handle it. You only need to ensure no large amounts of the materials find their way into the system.

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