My recent personal experience was a "duh!" moment. We had a couple lemons that had been 'zested' for a baking project. I've always cut up old citrus into small pieces and used them to freshen up the smell of the disposal, so I wasn't thinking I'd have an issue. But the disposal didn't sound right, so I stopped it and looked in there. Saw the lemon pieces and thought, "hmm", that should work just fine. Tried again and this time the disposal froze.
I hit the reset button on the bottom of the motor, took another look, then tried to grind them up again. Same result. I grabbed my trusty kitchen tongs and started fishing out the lemon chunks. But I came up with something else, too. A dark blue kitchen wash cloth had fallen into the disposal and that's what was catching. I'm blaming one of the kids for that one. It was pretty badly mutilated so it's history now. And the disposal worked happily ever after.
This link will take you to an article of really good things to pitch into the garbage can instead of the disposal. I hope it saves you some grief. If you want to talk about real estate or swap garbage disposal stories, feel free to call me at 810-220-1478.
