Nobody calls a disposal a problem until the sink is full of cold water and a fork is sitting in the basin. Before that day, there is usually a stretch of small signals, and most of them are easy to miss when you are doing two houses on one car.
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Start with the sound. A disposal that hums but does not spin, or that grinds for a second longer than it used to before it clears, is telling you something is catching. The water is the next clue. If the sink takes longer to empty after you run the tap, or the water sits for a few seconds and then drops all at once, the drain is narrowing somewhere. Smell is the third. A sour or rotten odor that comes up when the unit is off usually means food has collected under the splash guard or in the pipe where nothing rinses it away.
What to check on your next visit to Mom's house
Run the cold water for about thirty seconds, then turn on the disposal. Listen for a steady grind, not a hum or a stutter. Watch the second sink if the kitchen has one, because a gurgle there can point to a blockage shared by both drains. Look under the sink for drips at the connections and at the bottom of the unit. Then check the reset button on the underside of the unit, and note whether it is popped up. A tripped reset is not something to press over and over. If it trips again, that is the moment to call someone, not to keep trying.
Ask what the unit came with. Many disposals include a hex-shaped tool that fits a small hole in the bottom center, and turning it by hand can free a jam with the power off. Find that tool and put it in a spot everyone knows, not in a drawer in a house you no longer live in.
Who owns the check
This is the part most families skip. The sounds and smells happen on Mom's row, but the calls to fix anything tend to land on whoever answers the phone. Decide before the next slow drain who looks at the sink, who writes down what they saw, and who books the repair if the hex tool does not clear it. A short note on the fridge or in the shared calendar is enough, something like what you heard, what you tried, and who has the number of the plumber Mom already uses.
Also check the paper that came with the unit or the installation. Know whether the disposal is still under a warranty and who the contact is, because that changes whether you call the manufacturer or a local plumber. You do not need to price the job to know which path you are on.
Where it fits in the split week
Put the sink check on Mom's row, in the same lemon-colored collision list where you track other slow-moving things. A two-minute look on each visit is cheaper in time than a Sunday night spent hunting for a plumber while the kids need dinner. If the drain is slow twice in one month, treat it as something that is about to need a visit rather than a one-off annoyance. You are not failing anyone by catching it early. You are just doing the job the split week was built for.