Is It Time to Boycott the Kitchen Garbage Disposal?

An office assistant at Lyon Real Estate asked why this Sacramento REALTOR had eliminated the kitchen garbage disposal from my listing descriptions. That’s the attention to detail these guys provide, which is incredible. I don’t check the garbage disposal box on listing profiles for several reasons, one of which is I would like to start a campaign to do away with garbage disposals. If it were up to me, nobody in the universe would buy, fix or use a garbage disposal.

Garbage disposals are a useless item. There, I said it. The units also take up way too much space under the kitchen sink. Why can’t they design a garbage disposal like a Mac computer? My computer is 8 inches by 8 inches square and maybe an inch-and-a-half high. It’s much more powerful than my previous desktop Mac pro, and that thing was 3 feet tall. Today’s garbage disposals are still humongous and you could stuff a lot more cleaning supplies under the sink if the garbage disposal was gone.

Not only that, but people tend to lose fingers in them, and all kinds of other body parts, which I have no idea how they get them into the garbage disposal. When the garbage disposal won’t turn, then you’ve got to get out the broom, which nobody has seen since Nixon was in office, stick the handle into the disposal and try to turn it with the switch in the off position lest you spin around like a pole dancer.

Sometimes, the garbage disposal clogs can be so jammed that you’ve got to take the pipes apart. A jammed garbage disposal can also cause a back flow into the dishwasher without an air gap. Is it really that hard to scoop potato peelings or strawberry tops into the trash? Do we have to shove food down the drain like some kind of mentally challenged person? Harry, will you grind this stupid carrot into the drain?

Garbage disposals are noisy. They haven’t found a way to make a garbage disposal whisper quiet like a $1,000 exhaust fan. Whenever I am shooting photographs of a kitchen and reach for the light switch on the wall, I have a 50 / 50 chance it will instead be the garbage disposal switch. Which makes me jump if I’m unprepared for the sound of it.

A reason I don’t check the garbage disposal in my listings, even if the home has a garbage disposal, is probably partly because I’m on a war path to discriminate against them but also because MLS has only so much room for kitchen features. I’d rather point out the Subzero refrigerator that remains or the Wolf range than highlight instead the garbage disposal. Besides, I’d never want a buyer to complain that there is no kitchen garbage disposal but the listing contained it.

I’ve got bigger fish to fry. And those bones are not going down the garbage disposal because I threw ours away years ago.