You learn a lot in 18 years, especially if you spend more than 40 hours a week in an apartment community leasing office in any city or state. Along the way I have seen a lot of maintenance issues both preventable and surprisingly unpredictable.

Notice how small the openings are. Each opening is about the size of an aquarium rock.  Debris must be ground down small enough to easily fit into those spaces.

The most used and abused item in your apartment is often the food waste disposal (aka: garbage disposal or "DisposAll"). The naked truth is that garbage disposals everywhere are jammed and killed at the hands of aluminum pop tabs and many other common household items.  If I had a shoe for every time I heard "My garbage disposal is stuck and won't turn on." I still wouldn't have as many shoes as my Assistant Manager.   I have also heard "The water won't drain and it's starting to smell." almost as many times.

The garbage disposal is drastically misunderstood. Many people have this image of five twirling razor-sharp blades whipping around down there waiting to chew up metal and bones. Not so much. There are only two or three little discs down there (see image). Those discs do not have razor-sharp teeth or blades. A disposal is designed for minimal scraps that find their way down the drain. It's not for all the unwanted pasta, the potato peels or the occasional aquarium rock. If you find yourself in a jam and it's not convenient to call for maintenance or log onto mycamden.com to submit a request, you have options.

1. Make sure the power to the disposal is off.

2. Push back the drain gasket, shine your flashlight in the drain and use pliers to remove the offender. In a perfect world you have an elongated pair of needle-nosed pliers and a flashlight.  (a regular pair of needle-nosed pliers is fine but is a little more awkward).

3. If you turn on your disposal and you hear nothing at all, you may have to find and press a red reset button that will be located somewhere around the bottom of the disposal.

4. If you have removed the item but it still won't twirl, the newer garbage disposal may have a place to fit an Allen wrench (hex wrench).  Look under your sink at the disposal attached to your drain.  At the very center of the bottom of  your disposal there may be a small opening for an Allen (hex)wrench.  Use an Allen (hex) wrench to crank the base.  That will often free the bind and "you're cool again".

The biggest disposal jammers are:

• aluminum can pop tabs

• aquarium rocks: These nasty guys will actually ruin the disposal if they get down the drain and are present when you crank it up. This can be an unexpectedly expensive mistake. Disposals aren't cheap.

• juice box straws

• bread bag ties

• stringy fiber veggies: celery, potato peels, asparagus, avocado peels, corn husks. It’s such an irony to think that such healthy items can cause such disposal destruction.

• string:  thread, yarn, fabric

• bones:  chicken, ham and steak - side story In 1998 my maintenance team discovered a very large ham bone in a toilet trap.  Good stuff isn’t it?!

• pasta and rice:  They are often put down drains in large quantities. Look at the inset photo. A disposal can’t break down a lot of starchy materials small enough to go through those small openings.

• oils and grease: Oils and grease congeal and build-up making the openings even smaller

• vegetable and fruit pits:  avocado, peach, cherry pits

• bottle caps: Strange but true. The only bottle caps found in garbage disposals are from beer bottles…very interesting!

• glass shards: If they get into your sink and go down into the disposal stop running the water, wait for the drain to dry out and then vacuum it out with your vacuum extension wand.

• cigarette butts:  You have seen traffic intersections.  If those butts can’t get broken down by cars, gravel and precipitation, a garbage disposal will have no impact on a cigarette butt.

• screws/nails

• pennies (talk about watching your money go down the drain…)

Instead of allowing the pop tabs from your favorite beverage to bring your disposal to a halt, have a tab collecting practice in place.  My good friend Lizzette has been collecting pop tabs for many years for the Ronald McDonald House.  She has always asked for the aluminum tabs at every gathering she attends.  She is now known as the pop-tab collector among her friends, family and peers.  You can collect them yourself and submit them to any Ronald McDonald House Chapter.  Many public schools collect them but if you need to find a drop location search here for a local chapter.