I grew up in France and now live in the US, so when I moved into my house and the garbage disposal was broken, I shrugged it off and didn’t replace it for 4 years. Who needs that thing anyway?

And then it started getting so full of stuff it was clogging that sink entirely, so I had to replace it; and oh my, that thing is so convenient! Now I think it would be difficult getting used to not having one.

To be clear, nothing about it is indispensable, it’s 100% convenience.

For my first grown-up apartment in France, I didn’t mitigate this issue at all, I’d let bits of food into the sink all the time when cleaning dishes. Once in a while, the drain would clog, so I’d have to get under the sink, dismantle the P trap under there, clean it, and put it back together. It was annoying, but I didn’t think about it too much.

Then I moved in with my wife, and she got us little metal grids to put on top of the drain to catch stuff before it gets there. It was an improvement, I almost never had to unclog it anymore; but it still had constraints. The food would get stuck in it and then it was pretty nasty to clean up; and while you could throw most of the food bits in the trash, getting it real clean so the food stuck in it wouldn’t rot and smell required water… and therefore still putting some smallest bits of food into the drain. So, it would still need to be unclogged, even though a lot more rarely. Because of that, I had learned to scrape dishes harder into the garbage if they had stuff that would be nastier to clean up in that little metal filter later.

But now with a garbage disposal, none of that matters anymore. Of course I still empty large bits of food into the garbage because I’m not a madman; but past that, I don’t have to think about anything else, I clean dishes in that sink, and then when I’m done, I press the button. All foods will be crushed anyway, so I don’t think about it. And of course I never have to unclog anything, since the whole point is that it unclogs itself. Nice!