What is that smell? Foul, dirty, and downright putrid. It’s probably your garbage disposal. If you have a commercial food business, a garbage disposal is an essential appliance. Apart from its scheduled maintenance by commercial kitchen appliance repair services, you should perform regular cleaning and use these tips to eliminate that stink from your commercial garbage disposal.
Ways To Get Rid Of Unpleasant Commercial Garbage Disposal Smell
Don’t Put Everything In The Garbage Disposal
When working in a restaurant and dealing with food waste, you want to get rid of everything quickly. However, amidst this rush, don’t put everything in that commercial garbage disposal because you still need to put a lot in the trash bags.
You can put in food scraps, fruit pits, a small amount of vegetable scraps, corn cabs, cooked meat, leftover food without or with small bones, and ice in the disposal. However, you should be careful and don’t put in large amounts of vegetable peels and eggshells. It’s a myth that eggshells remove odor or sharpen the blades of the garbage disposal. But if there are a few eggshells, it may be fine to put them in the disposal.
Other things you should not put in the disposal are grease, oil, oyster shells, corn husk, large bones, and any other non-food items like spoons and forks. Make sure to separate these non-food things from the dishes before because sometimes, a spoon can accidentally fall into the disposal which can damage the appliance.
Following this advice will help you reduce the stench and also keep your commercial garbage disposal from breaking down on you when you need it the most.
Run The Disposal Longer
It’s a common and good advice shared by many kitchen experts and plumbers that you should always run your disposal longer. When you sense that the garbage disposal has done its thing, don’t turn it off right away and keep it running for another 10-30 seconds.
Use Natural Deodorizers
If you want to keep your commercial garbage disposal fresh at all times, then natural deodorizers are here to save the day. There are plenty of things you can find in your kitchen that will turn into a garbage disposal freshener. Here are some of them.
Vinegar
Vinegar might be pungent in smell, but that’s exactly what you need to kill the mold and fungus that’s causing the weird funky smells in the first place. What you want to do is take an ice cube tray and fill it up with vinegar.
If you want, you can even add in a couple of drops of essential oils, like lemon and tea tree, to give the vinegar cubes a wonderful and fresh scent. Freeze them and once you’re ready to use them, throw a couple in the garbage disposal and call it a day.
Baking Soda
The next kitchen/pantry essential that can double up as an amazing deodorizer is baking soda. If you didn’t know about the smelly shoe hack, then you’re missing out on the odor-repelling power of baking soda.
All you need for this is some baking soda and either some lemon juice or vinegar. Mix the two, until you get a wet sand-like consistency. Once that’s done, shape the baking soda mixture into small balls and freeze them. Once they’re hardened, put a couple in the disposal and you’ll smell the difference for yourself.
Lemon
Lemon is also a wonderful antibacterial and refreshing agent that has a fresh and clean scent. You can use dried-up, cut-up lemons and put them in the garbage disposal.
You can also use lemon peel and stick it in the disposal and you’ll love the fresh and clean fragrance it emanates. You won’t ever smell that awful stench again with lemon, and that’s a fact.
Lavender
Lavender smells great and this is exactly why you need to put it in your commercial garbage disposal. If you want, you can use the baking soda hack with a bit of dried-up lavender and make refreshing fragrance bombs with it for your garbage disposal.
If that’s too much work, then all you need is dried-up lavender. Take some twine, wrap it around a bunch of lavender flowers, and put it in the disposal. If you want, you can also put a few drops of orange or lemon essential oils and that’s going to turn your garbage disposal from stinky to fragrant in no time.
Salt And Ice
It’s another easy method of removing garbage disposal odor. Salt will remove the smell coming from the disposal while ice will help remove some of the build-up stuck on the blades and other parts of the disposal. As it can also sharpen the blades of your disposal, this will help you minimize the rate of food waste getting stuck in the disposal.
Put a few ice cubes in the disposal followed by a few spoons of salt and turn the disposal on for a bit.
Use Deodorizing Products
If natural is not the way to go for you, then there are a plethora of products that you can buy from your local supermarket to combat that stink. There are lots of chemical deodorizers that do a wonderful job of sealing the stench and making it go away for good.
The only thing that you need to keep in mind is the fact that you should use them up quickly, so you’ll need a bulk stock of that, especially if you’re running a commercial food business and your garbage disposal is used continuously.
Clean The Disposal
Even the thing you use for grinding food waste needs cleaning. Why? Because as a garbage disposal breaks up food waste, some bits and pieces of food are not broken down or drained well. They get stuck in or near the garbage disposal. This food usually causes the smell that you want to get rid of.
As you use garbage disposal for disposing of loads of food waste generated by your busy commercial kitchen, you should make a routine to clean the garbage disposal at the end of the work day. You will only thank yourself in the future for doing this extra bit of work and your garbage disposal will not only look clean but smell fresh too.
What If The Smell Doesn’t Go Away After Using A Cleaning Method?
So, you cleaned the garbage disposal and used lemon slices in the end as well so get rid of the smell, but the bad odor is still there? It’s a common problem, so you have to keep repeating the cleaning method you think is working or use another method. However, the new method should also be tried multiple times.
In some cases, there is food waste in parts of the disposal or pipes that are hard to clean. For this, you should use the help of a disposal repair expert or a plumber to remove the disposal or the pipe and clean it thoroughly.
Conclusion
Bad smell can not only be off-putting for people, but it can also find its way into other places, so instead of having to live with it, get rid of it to make your surroundings smell fresh again. In case, you need deep cleaning or the deposal needs an inspection, consult commercial garbage disposal repair Northern VA services.