When I was growing up, these seemed to be ubiquitous and I never liked them. They seemed overcomplicated for the purpose, and created a gross and smelly area under the sink that needed more cleaning.
I haven’t had one in years, as a simple sink mesh does the same job. But I don’t really know how other people are. Are under sink garbage disposals still common, and commonly actually used by people here?
I find they’re pretty ubiquitous where I’m from. I had one in every apartment I’ve lived in. I don’t have one in my house though.
I know a lot of people will just dump a lot of food waste in there. After struggling with it, I started just throwing out all of the waste and using the garbage disposal for the small bits of food that would normally get caught in the sink strainer.
Now that I’m back to living in a place with no garbage disposal, I do miss it a little. The sink strainer is a bit gross to handle. But it’s also pretty nice not having to maintain the garbage disposal so it all evens out.
What maintenance? I had to fish broken glass out of mine once, but otherwise I’ve never had to mess with it.