As part our sponsorship of Home Ownership, we’re going to be giving a weekly home improvement tip here on our blog. Seeing as it’s week one, we thought we’d start with something simple: Garbage Disposal Maintenance.

Now some of you may already know the tricks listed below, but for those that don’t, try these over the next year to keep your disposal smelling fresh and running clean.

Tip number 1: Throw some ice cubes down the disposal every once in a while! (Note: you must be running cold water when you do this.) The common misconception is that doing this will sharpen the blades, but that is not the case. What the ice cubes do, is clean off any gunk or food that maybe collecting on the edges of the blades. This allows the blades to slice food better in the future. For those that want bonus points, make the ice cubes from lemon juice.

Tip number 2: Have you ever wondered why your dishwasher sometimes smells? The answer is your garbage disposal vents into your dishwasher. So if you’ve ever opened your dishwasher after doing a load of dishes and wondered why despite looking clean, they didn’t smell so hot, you now have your answer. The cure for this problem is to put some citrus into the disposal. Take either a lemon or an orange and cut it into quarters or slightly smaller pieces and then start sticking the pieces down 1-2 at a time and run the disposal. The citrus will get rid of the odor and hang around for a little bit so when you just turn on the water you’ll get that sweet smell as it goes down the drain.

Well that’s all for week 1! We hope we have helped some of you and encourage everyone to test out our tips this weekend!