Smelly Garbage Disposal? Try The Ice Trick

There are many potential sources of foul odor in my home -- my kids, their shoes, me after the gym -- but none so recently offensive as the smell coming from my garbage disposal.

I'm a modern woman, so when I need to figure out how to do something, I ask Alexa.

The "ice trick" was among the most agreed upon ways to de-stink your garbage disposal. Professional plumber Bruce Davis explains on Angie's List, "Once the food we put into the disposal is smashed up, liquefied and shoved through the holes or slits in the plate/flywheel, it simply collects in the bottom hopper and drains out the drain, helped by the pull of gravity and the impeller "teeth" working correctly."

That means, every time you're hovering over the sink, you're getting whiff after whiff of cumulative gunk building up and never draining. Add hot water to that and you have the smell of steamy gunk build-up.

So, the ice trick. Pretty easy -- turn on the disposal while running cold water. Then dump 3-4 trays of ice cubes into the disposal.

What happened next, scared the crap out of me. All of a sudden, the ice started to back up into the sink and in under a minute it looked like I was making sewage-colored sno-cones.

Now, since I read all the comments on the original Angie's List article, I didn't freak out too much -- this is exactly what's supposed to happen.

Keep the disposal running, eventually the gunk will clear itself out and the sink will drain.

How does it work? According to Davis, the ice freezes any gunk left in the disposal, "causing it to chunk off the impeller blades and out of the holes in the plate/flywheel." Pretty neat. And FREE to do!

If your disposal still has an unpleasant scent, you can also put chopped pieces of lemon through it.