A kitchen can be sparkling clean, but if a bad odor lingers, even the cleanest kitchen won’t seem quite as clean. Kitchen garbage disposals are usually forgotten about… until they develop a bad odor.

A garbage disposal or waste disposal unit is a device, usually electrically-powered, installed under a kitchen sink between the sink’s drain and the trap which shreds food waste into pieces small enough to pass through plumbing. The leftover food bits in a garbage disposal unit usually cause the bad odor.

Bad odors from garbage disposals aren’t uncommon. With food being disposed of on a daily basis, it’s no wonder why garbage disposals develop execrable smells from time to time. Old food gets trapped in crevices, on the splash guard, while odor-causing bacteria eventually begin to form. Bacteria are responsible for creating foul odors, and if you get rid of bacteria, you’ll get rid of the odors.

Basic Garbage Disposal Smell Removal

* Running Water: When you are using your disposal, always keep the water running. When the disposal is done and turned off, keep the water running for 30 seconds more. This should rinse the little bits that are left down the drain. You’ll soon notice that the smell has become a thing of the past.

* Cleaning the Disposal: Before getting rid of garbage disposal odors, it’s important to first clean the garbage disposal. If you don’t clean it first, you’ll end up covering up odors instead of getting rid of them. Your dirty garbage disposal will simply go from smelling like something rotten to something rotten and whatever you’re using to cover up the bad smell.

About once a month, simply fill the disposer side of the sink with hot water and add about one-eighth cup of grease-cutting dishwasher liquid. After the sink is full, remove the stopper, and turn on the disposal while continuing to run hot water.

The hot water combined with degreaser will effectively clean away grease and grime, and it will also help clean out the pipes in the process.

* Mint Extract: If you prefer the scent of mint over citrus, give your disposer a fresh clean scent with a little mint extract. After the garbage disposal has been cleaned, pour several drops of mint extract into the unit. Allow the mint extract to remain in the disposer a few hours before turning it on and rinsing it away. Your disposer will smell fresh and clean for days.

* Citrus Peel: Don’t waste your money buying expensive garbage disposal deodorizers. Once the unit is clean, consider deodorizing it by tossing in lemon, lime or orange peels.

Your garbage disposal will smell as fresh as a citrus grove. Do this once every couple of weeks along with regular cleaning, and your disposal won’t have a chance to develop a bad odor.

* Vinegar Ice: You wouldn’t want to put this ice in a glass of cola, but ice made with vinegar does wonders for smelly garbage disposals. Fill an ice tray with a mixture of white vinegar and water. Freeze this concoction, and put it down your smell disposer while running cold water.

The ice will help sharpen the blades, and the vinegar will deodorize the unit. Make a tray of vinegar ice every other week so your garbage disposal continues to smell clean and fresh. Just make sure you label this ice so someone doesn’t get an unpleasant surprise.

* Splash Guard Cleaning: Sometimes bad odors aren’t coming from inside the disposer, but actually from the underside of the splash guard. The rubber splash guard eventually becomes covered with grime and slime.

Periodically wipe the underside of the splash guard with deodorizing kitchen cleaner or a mixture of bleach and water. This alone might solve your smelly garbage disposal problem.

* Flap Brushing: Besides the obvious idea of using orange peels in the disposer, use an old dish brush to brush the underside of the rubber flaps in the disposal opening and brush around in the disposer. There is lots of gunk that collects there that can cause odor.

* Ensemble Cleanup: If you’re using baking soda to deodorize your fridge and whatnot, you can run its residue down the garbage disposal for efficient cleaning.

You can also clean your sink more thoroughly with your dish soap by putting a little bleach down the unit before you start running the water. While you’re scrubbing down the sink (20-30 seconds) the bleach sets and when you rinse then you start up the disposal to clean through.

Of course, depending on the dish soap, you need to be careful with the bleach fumes. Just leave your sink window open throughout the entire process.

Garbage Disposal Smell Removing Products

If you do want to waste, um, spend your money wisely in buying expensive disposal deodorizers, buy only the best. Also, use them only after the above methods have been implemented; it would be a waste to use them while the strong garbage smell is still lurking in your garbage disposal unit.

* Buy a large pump of Febreze; it works on everything; smelly hampers, sticky rental cars, sleeping bags that reek of camp fire. You name the smell, Febreze can quell. You can get it at most supermarkets.

* Try Renuzit, in any scent. If you can, try to find Super Odor Killer. The fragrance in SOK (introduced in 1972) is not readily identifiable, because SOK uses a blend of perfumes left over when fragrance manufacturers produced a little too much for another company’s orders.

This blend is not only good at masking a variety of odors; it could be used at slightly higher fragrance levels without overwhelming the user. The popular and more readily available Country Kitchen scent will also suffice.

* Nature’s Miracle is recommended for the removal of urine, stool, blood or any organic material from any surface, and of course most garbage in a garbage disposal unit is very much organic. It consists of billions of nature’s enzymes that turn organic stains and odor into less offensive compounds.

* Bane-Clene contains 2-Butoxyethanol, an organic solvent with the formula C6H14O2. It is a colorless liquid with a sweet, ether-like odor. It is akin to butyl ether of ethylene glycol, but should not be confused with it. This product is great for allergies in the sense that it’s mostly a hypoallergenic cleaner.

* ProKlean has a whole range of products ranging from mattress cleaners, deodorizers and solvents; pick any ProKlean product to suit your garbage disposal smell removal needs. Ideal for cleaning and disinfecting floors, walls, sinks, baths, showers, toilets and most tiled areas and fittings, a drop of most any Proklean product will achieve all your desired cleaning results.

Advanced Garbage Disposal Smell Removal

You’ve tried all the methods and nothing works! What could still be your garbage disposal unit’s problem? What can you do about it? The answer may be inside the belly of the beast itself. To remove any hardened food slurry deposits from the inside of your garbage disposal, you are now going to have to do a small amount of plumbing work.

Go to a real plumbing supply house and purchase a rubber test cap that has a stainless steel tightening band on it. This clamp is just like a muffler band clamp. Plumbers use these temporary test caps to close off the ends of pipes for either water or air pressure testing required by a plumbing inspector.

You should be able to find one made for 1 and ¼ inch diameter PVC schedule 40 pipe that will fit perfectly on the 1 and ½ inch diameter tubular pipe leaving the disposal. Disconnect the pipe that leaves the disposal from the drain system piping under your sink or from the p-trap under the sink. Attach the rubber test cap to the end of the tubular pipe leaving the garbage disposal and tighten the clamp. Place an empty five-gallon bucket under the end of this pipe in case the clamp leaks or slips.

With the rubber test cap in place, start to fill the disposal with very warm water. If you purchased the right clamp and you have the clamp tightened just right, the disposal will act as if it is clogged and the water will begin to back up into the sink. Stop running the water as soon as the level reaches the top of the chrome strainer basket in the bottom of the sink that connects to the disposal.

Now add one-half cup of powdered oxygen bleach to the garbage disposal filled with water. Oxygen bleach is non-toxic and will not harm you, the garbage disposal, the plumbing system or septic tank should your home be connected to one.

Once the powder is added to water, it begins to create millions of tiny oxygen ions that start to soften and attack the rotten, hardened garbage on the sides of the disposal and any slurry on the side walls of the drain pipe leaving the disposal. The oxygen bleach solution, if left in the disposal for up to an hour, does a fantastic job of sanitizing the unit.

After letting the oxygen bleach solution work inside the disposal for an hour, loosen the clamp on the rubber test cap and let the water rush into the bucket. Insert the stopper into the sink, fill the sink with warm, soapy water, remove the stopper and turn on the disposer.

Once you have done this, the disposer should be as clean as the day it was installed. It should also smell as good as the day it was installed!