Chris, potato peels and the garbage disposal.....

So the other night I was making dinner and had a sink full of potato peels. Eight potatoes worth of peels to be exact. Still hearing dad's voice ringing in my ears from childhood "the garbage disposal is not meant for that much stuff", I intended to put them in the trash. Well, what would you do if the trash can was completely full?

Empty the trash, you say? Um, how about just run them down the disposal, just this one time. I flipped the switch and away it went for the first couple of seconds and then all of a sudden they were spitting back up at me and the water was NOT draining down the sink. Crud.

What now, you say? I stuck my hand down in the drain to get it unclogged ofcourse(yes, I turned off the disposal first). If only it were that easy. There wasn't a peel to be found, just a sink of soppy potato peel bits and water.

Fortunately a light bulb turned on in my head and I remembered I have a plumber for a brother-in-law. Unfortunately, he lives seventeen hundred miles away, but surely he could "walk" me through this little problem over the phone. He answered right away, thank goodness, and exlpained exaclty what I need to do.

"Do you see a ninety degree attachment coming off the disposal?"

"Um, yes."

"Good, now just take that off and clean it out, you'll probably have to clean the p-trap out too".

"Um, Chris, what is this allen wrench thingy that says I should use it in case of a clog so I don't have to call a plumber".

"Don't use that, you would have to take the whole unit off. Trust me, don't use that". (Thinking in his mind-aren't you already calling a plumber?)

"Um, ok."

So I follow his instruction and get the ninety and p-trap off, clean it out (it was FULL of the peels) reattach and turn on the water see if we had success. The sink starts filling with water, again. Crud. Take the ninety and p-trap back off, realize I didn't clean it out that good. Re-clean it, thank you screwdriver (very versatile tool), and try again. This time before putting it back together I ran the water and disposal (yes, a kaleidoscope of peel bits went everywhere under my sink), just to make sure it was clear.

Now I have the whole thing back together and working, but it wasn't a pretty site under the sink. I did manage to catch most of the water in a container, but the peel bits could not be contained.

Well, I suppose it was a good excuse to clean out under the sink. Thanks for coming to the rescue, Chris!