theITbaby

the IT city, the I.T. Baby

How-To

How to get a baby bottle out of a sink garbage disposal

Garbage disposal that my baby's bottle went down
And lo it came to pass that the perfect set of circumstances conspired to put my nine ounce AVENT baby bottle right down into the garbage disposal

So, you were cleaning baby’s high chair tray and scooped out all the leftover bananas and eggs into the sink, removed the rubber lip from the in-sink garbage disposal so you could push the non-eaten baby food in, and somehow you managed to drop your nine ounce baby bottle right down the garbage disposal. You might want to know how to get a baby bottle out of a sink garbage disposal, and that’s what I’m going to tell you.

If you’re reading this, you dropped it neck down, and you’ve realized that the bottle is almost the exact right dimensions to be impossible to remove from the garbage disposal by using your hands, tongs, or anything you might immediately think of.

Before you go any further, do the sensible and sane thing and make sure the garbage disposal has no power, is unable to turn on, and whatever else you need to do to make sure you don’t lose fingers while playing with this.

When mine dropped, it also managed to slightly hook on the blades of the disposal, so I was unable to position it in it’s in-sink captive state. You should give up on the idea of grabbing it on either side as your garbage disposal opening will prevent things such as tongs from allowing you to pull it out of the opening.

How to get a baby bottle out of a sink garbage disposal

Suction cup thing I get at CES 2014
These are the suction cups I used. I got them at CES 2014 and have no idea who gave them to me or why. My guess is they have something to do with a cell phone product but I can’t find any documentation on them

Look around your house, if you have a suction cup that’s the ideal thing to use – just slap a suction cup on the bottom of the bottle and slowly pull it up. You can use suction cup darts, window hanging suction cups, etc. That’s what I did. Any attempts to grab it from the sides were futile.

Alternately get some heavy duty tape and make a bottle mitt to remove said bottle. You’ll need to dry off the top of the thing a bit first for most tapes.

You can also use a popsicle stick and some chewing gum if you’re feeling up to it.

If those fail, make a lasso out of some kite string and fish it down to the neck. That should give you the most pulling ability if it’s wedged in there.

And if none of those work, you can always turn on the garbage disposal and give big baby another $7 for a bottle while you watch that one be slowly devoured by the sink badger.

Wrap-up

Death Star Exhaust Port
The bottle made a 90 degree turn in mid-air and then went straight down a port, there was some Jedi trickery afoot

It was the most perplexing event I’ve had happen, how that set of circumstances came together to put a perfectly shaped object into that minuscule opening and at that angle. There was no way that could have been done, it seemed, without some crazy Jedi powers.

Luckily when it happened to me Maggie was contained and I didn’t need the bottle that second, I doubt I would have figured out any way to retrieve it had I a screaming infant telling me what to do.

Upon retrieval I sanitized the crap out of it and did a quick inspection. Even though it had hooked a blade there wasn’t any evidence that there was damage. Those blades are dull enough to not dig in, they just power through.

Paul King

Paul King lives in Nashville Tennessee with his wife, two daughters and cats. He writes for Pocketables, theITBaby, and is an IT consultant along with doing tech support for a film production company.