Waste Disposal Units

Are they noisy? Do you know if it's on?

I can imagine all sorts of accidents.

don't ever put corn husks in one....thats how i broke the last one.

you should just set your house on fire

Grinding up citrus peels in one = classic. Grinding up cutlery and/or sticking your fingers down in the maw when running = dud.

Fascinating. I see them in American movies & TV shows and over here in Europe, they're not even authorized, apparently:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_disposal

Tell us Europeans more! Does every American house/apartment have one? Does this mean you don't get to put the trash out anymore? (I know these are stupid questions, but you'd be surprised how little we know about the daily lives of people only one country away)

i've never lived in a house with one -- i always saw them as a weird extravagance -- for people who can't handle the hardship of scraping their plates

My mother-in-law has one, that was my first experience of one. They are strange, wondrous things.

Although they do seem a bit unnecessary. Where does the waste go anyway? Into the sewer?

Other kitchen appliances of THE FUTURE that are everywhere in America and don't exist in Europe - ice-cube makers in GIANT FRIDGES OF AWESOMENESS.

American style fridges are starting to become the next big thing over here (Belgium, don't know about the rest of europe), with ice cube makers and tv screens and everything.

ice cube makers are pretty great

other conveniences i only ever found in other people's hosues: a little shelf sculpted into the outside of the fridge door on which you could place a glass and get either ice cubes, cold water, or crushed ice tumbling down into your glass! it was like having taco bell right in your own house

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about - my mother-in-law has one of those fridge door thingies. She yells at us if we use it though, because we're "using up all her ice".

??! it just makes more!

to be clear for the europeans here, many american fridges have an ice-cube maker in the freezer section but no futuristic door-flap dispenser convenience window

I know, I know. My wife does it deliberately now to wind her up.

xpost

Reading this post, as an American, is kind of like watching some movie about cavemen discovering fire or something.

Garbage disposals: not every house has them. You can't just dump anything into them either - they grind the garbage up relatively fine and then wash it out into the drain. As said above, they're good for small bits of things that you don't want to scrape out of the drain, but you can't just dump a turkey carcass into your sink and watch it vanish. I installed one when I remodeled the kitchen in our house, and we had a plumber come by to do some stuff and he loudly denounced them in general and warned us that we would be calling him back when our drain eventually clogs.

Ice makers: they're pretty great. Sadly I have been too lazy to hook up the water supply line yet because there's not an easy spot to do this near my fridge. But we have one - not the through-the-door water/ice dispensers but the bulit in ones in the freezer.

Dishawashers: new ones are great. Now that I've had one I'll never NOT have one again in my life. Mine has the built in food grinder thing and the manual actually warns you not to rinse your plates off before you put them in because it's more efficient to just blast everything off right in the dishwasher.

I miss the dishwasher in my last apt. RIP life of luxury.

Ice makers and ice/water dispensers are great. Sometimes we pump out a big glass of ice cubes just to put in the cats' water bowl -- they like to lick it and then be baffled when it disappears.

Our kitchen drain is too sluggish to add a disposal, but someday, if we ever manage that kitchen remodel I've been dreaming about...

I don't like dishwashers. Washing cookware with them is generally a bad idea, and that just leaves dinnerware, glasses, utensils and flatware. Might as well do them by hand while I'm doing the cookware.

Disposals are so great! It is nice to be able to quickly dispense of the raw meat scraps when trimming up meats so the dog does not get them and so they do not stink up the garbage (had a roomie yell at me about this once). If you put a fork in one by accident, it sounds like the apocalypse, and your fork comes out scraped. I do not have one.

I love the 'hold it up to the fridge door ice and water dispensers,' esp. the ones that offer crushed ice! I call them 'magic fridges.'

I do not have any of these but the kitchen thing I miss the most x 1 billion is a dishwasher.

I do have a toaster, tho!

I thought you weren't supposed to put meat scraps down a disposal.

Newer houses tend to have disposals & dishwashers. I have rented many a house from the turn of the previous century's turn of the century to the 1950s and cute as they are they lack a lot of advantages such as evenly distributed heat, insulation, non-creaky floors, AC and dishwashers. I hate the antiseptic feel of a modern beigeland apartment but I kind of like paying non-exorbitant electric bills, being warm, and not doing dishes by hand.

Well, Rock, I was born and not very raised. If you aren't, I was doing it anyway, as one ignernt of modern conveniences.

We had a waste disposal in two different houses when I was growing up. Very useful.

I read something somewhere, I will try and dig up the article saying that there would be significant environmental benefits if every one had a waste disposal and the sewage treatment system was beefed up to cope. Less land fill, high quality compost/fertiliser and methane capture for power generation and greenhouse reduction.

cute as they are they lack a lot of advantages such as evenly distributed heat, insulation, non-creaky floors, AC and dishwashers

Indeed. My 1940 house now has a dishwasher, garbage disposal and bathroom vent fan but lacks insulation, has creaky floors, and a furnace older than I am. But what I miss the most is 3 prong outlets.