A couple of days ago, my garbage disposal stopped working. This is not the first time that this disposal stopped spinning suddenly. When you have 40+ year old appliances, you come to expect outages now and then. In fact, one of the perks of my apartment building is that there’s an entire staff of guys who are paid to be around and fix things when needed. However, the last time my gb went down, it took Emilio all of three minutes to fix it. And it cost me $20.

So when it stopped working this time, I figured that I would try to fix it myself. I poked around under my sink for awhile and didn’t find much. I called Scott in and made him get down on the kitchen floor for a look (he was so thrilled at this turn of events). Then we turned to the internet, and thanks to a little sleuthing on Scott’s part, we were able to find trouble-shooting instructions for our In-Sink-Erator Badger 1. Apparently these devices have not changed much in the last forty years.

Unfortunately, the repair required a particular tool, called the Self-Service Wrenchette, that was provided with the disposal. I found an allen wrench, but it didn’t do the job. Scott returned to the tool drawer, poked around a little bit and came back to the kitchen, holding a small tool and said, “Your propensity for keeping everything has paid off once again.”

Yep, he was holding the Self-Service Wrenchette that originally came with disposal 42 years ago. However, I can take no credit for this one, as all applause goes to my grandparents, from whom I learned my retention skills.

A few twists and turns, and the garbage disposal was working like new. I discovered an olive pit that had gotten stuck under one of the blades and was holding up the works. Hooray for fixing things yourself!