I agree. I used to lick raw chicken and other meat, just to challenge my immune system. But then the butcher asked me to stop doing that. Apparently the other customers didn’t like it.
I’m cheap so I stretch my sponge use out as much as possible. Green scrubby side. I wring it out. It gets a funky odor if I leave it wet. My sink has a little false flip down holder under the ledge that it gets stored in. I put it on the top rack of the dishwasher each time I run it which seems to keep it fresh longer. I like doing that better than the microwave.
We use a sponge and a separate scrubby thingy- a Dobie I think it’s called. We replace the sponge every few weeks, and the Dobie a week or two behind that. I squeeze the life out of the sponge when I’m done with it and hang it in the little rack thing suction-cupped to the side of the sink, but my wife leaves it soaked and soapy, sitting in the sink. Then she complains that it smells, so she runs it through the dishwasher every week. I try to tell her (my speculation) that it wouldn’t smell so much if she would wring it out, but she waves me off like I’m wearing a tinfoil hat.
I get about 3-4 months out of the blue sponges washing everything by hand, and then they go in the cleaning supplies bin. I have a milk cow, and everything I use for dairy purposes gets sanitized with bleach daily, including the sink and dishwashing apparatus. I think this is what keeps the sponges from getting nasty sooner.
I squeeze mine out and keep it in a little suction cupped holder on the side of the sink. I use the sponge and/or a brush once or twice a day. It dries completely between uses, I’ve never bleached, microwaved, or otherwise “cleaned” any of them, and I’ve never had a smelly sponge. That’s disgusting. When I encounter a wet sponge somewhere else, that appears to be the perpetually wet kind, I’m put off by it and will often use paper towels instead to wash whatever I wanted to wash. I’m currently using some kind of beige colored “naturals” with scrubby on one side and sponge on the other. I use them until they start to fall apart. Months. No dishwasher.
I wrap a sponge-pad up in several of those net bags that onions come in, and tie them up into knots… The net bag lasts forever that way, without losing their scouring abrasiveness. I only have to replace it a couple of times a year.
Would it be possible for you to post a photo of your hinged door in front of the sink? Oh, and the little plastic tray in the door thingy? I’m on an organisational binge at the moment and this sounds neat. Probably not doable for my kitchen but I do like to steal other people’s ideas where possible.
I like to wring out the sponge (yellow foam, two sided scrubber with a gentle white scrubber on one side, and a harsher green scrubber on the other - a brand probably not available in the US) and leave it almost dry on the sink. My son, on the other hand, just leaves everything in the sink, staying wet and getting mouldy. It drives me crazy.
If you do a search for “sink front tip out tray” you’ll find a bunch of examples.
Squeezed out and stood on its end on the drainboard to dry.
I keep quite a few in rotation. Every week or so I throw the sponge in the rag hamper and the “used” sponges eventually get washed and dried in hot water with bleach with the cleaning rags. Then I stack them in a little rack on the inside of the cabinet door under my sink where they finish drying and wait for re-use. It never occurred to me to just throw them out. When they get too ratty I chuck 'em and open a new one as needed.
As far as stinkiness - I don’t have a dishwasher, and used to have a perpetual problem with stinky sponge. Even if the sponge was brand new, it would stink within a day. What that says about the cleanliness of my sink area, I don’t know, but it would happen no matter how much I cleaned and sanitized. Palmolive antibacterial dish soap completely eliminated the problem. Strangely, Dawn antibacterial doesn’t work.
Cutting off the corner is brilliant! I occasionally demote an old one for cleaning use, but never had a way to really differentiate them. Thanks.
As already mentioned, I’m in the middle of an organisational/decluttering kick and this interests me. I use a sponge for dish washing and disposable cloths (Chux) for wiping down counters etc. What sort of ‘dish rags’ do you use? Are they expensive? Do they do double duty for dishes and the counters? I could see myself changing the habits of almost-a-lifetime if this system of yours turns out to be an improvement on my own.
Thank you. I’ve never seen these before. Next time I get the kitchen remodelled, I’m having one!
I hope that “rotate” isn’t quite the word that you meant :).
I never use a sponge I think they are germ collectors. I’m using the cheap green scouring pads - they’re less abrasive than the quality ones and they dry out better than sponge. I have a pile of cut up old tee shirts for dish cloths, use for the day then into the wash.
Huh. You’re supposed to replace these? 
Seriously, 99% of my stuff goes in the dishwasher. I haven’t replace the sponge (yellow and green) in well over a year.
Green and yellow here.
I use them until they fall apart, which can be a matter of months or years.
My preference is to squeeze them and let them dry.
However, I should emphasize that I put the sponge in a particular hierarchy in the cleaning world. Sponges are there to get chunks of stuff off… but a surface/dish that has been cleaned only by a sponge is merely free of chunks and should not be considered clean or safe. For countertops or floors, this might actually be OK because I’m not preparing food directly on them and I don’t go around licking them. For plates and cutting boards, they need to go through soap and them be rinsed by clean water (which I usually accomplish in the dishwasher). In an ideal world, I’d add a bleach step, but omitting this hasn’t killed me yet.
(So… just to clarify, the cleaning process is four distinct steps: soap/sponge, soap/water, pure water, dry).
I think I bought like a dozen of them at Walmart for $5. [I’ve actually got about forty rags all together]
I use them for both cleaning off dishes before I stick them in the dishwasher and I also use them to wipe down counter tops. Although, whenever I’m about to wipe off the counter tops, I’ll grab a fresh one.
I have no idea how the math works out if you consider the amount of electricity spent washing said rags. I normally just wash them with my regular loads anyway.
Me too! Although I wouldn’t be putting anything wet in there, what a handy space for small items.
i’ve seen just the mechanism in a box. you remove the panel and attach it to the tray mechanism after you attach it.
I don’t like the scrubbers attached to the sponge, for the aforementioned stinky reasons. We have a spongeless green scrubber only. My sister cuts hers in half for weird frugal reasons? I try and keep it washed out and on the draining rack when not in use, but maxthevool won’t…
We use the yellow kind with the green scrubby on one side. Our favorite brand is “the one on sale at the grocery store when we need more sponges”. Generally we give the things quick rinse after scrubbing plates, and then toss the sponge onto its end between the backsplash and the faucet to dry. That’s not to say I don’t find them in the sink a lot; they apparently take swan dives in when we’re out of the room.
Only two of us (out of four roommates) do dishes here, so usually what happens is that we use a sponge until one of us thinks it looks too grotty to be applying to things we eat off of, and then it gets stolen for something else. She takes them for bathroom cleaning, and I steal them for small animal cages. It finally gets thrown out when whichever one of us took it feels more trepidation at the thought of touching it than at the idea of doing the cleaning it’s meant for, and the cycle begins anew.