Unjam Your Garbage Disposal With This 5-Minute Fix

If your garbage disposal is making a humming sound instead of its typical grinding noise when you flip on the switch, it’s jammed. Shut it off right away to avoid burning out the motor. While garbage disposals are powerful appliances, they're meant to chew up soft food. Bones, corn kernels, fruit pits, glass and other solid materials can get stuck in a garbage disposal’s grind ring, jamming it (I even once had an errant penny clog my garbage disposal). Unjamming it is a relatively simple process that doesn't require any special tools.