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To avoid clogging your garbage disposal or causing it to break down, you should make sure the things you put down your garbage disposal are appropriate. In most cases, problems with your garbage disposal, or problems with your drains in general, stem from putting things down it that are sticky or have the potential to expand with moisture.

This means you should avoid putting fats, oils, and greases down your garbage disposal, along with starchy foods, raw animal skin, and hard bones.

Your garbage disposal should always be run with water — and specifically with cold water, unless you’re trying to clean it, in which case hot water is acceptable. This is to prevent warm, liquified fat from moving into your drains as a mass and then cooling and congealing into a clog or a coating that will accumulate debris until it becomes a clog.

If the fat is cold and solid already, your disposal will have to chop it up properly for it to pass on, minimizing the threat, or it will stay in the disposal where you can clean it out.

If your garbage disposal gives no response whatsoever after you first turn it on, its internal breaker may have tripped and you may need to reset it. To do this, feel along the bottom of the disposal, found under your sink, for a little button you can push up into the body of the machine.

After pressing the button, you should hear a little click noise, and your disposal should activate again. If it doesn’t work or your disposal immediately trips again, you have a more serious issue at hand that will need to be resolved.