Let me answer both ways. Currently, I have ~10 washable sponge, so I wash them in washer and dryer. Each sponge is used about 2-7 days before I switch to a different.
Before I used washable sponge, I used to use each sponge about once every 12 months.
Yes, that is about right. I just don’t switch them until I feel like it. I clock it at once a year, but it can be shorter or longer.
Hey when you are a college student and grad student, everything just seems expensive. Changing sponge just didn’t seem like not really that important. I mean. The water rinses the dishes anyway.
I don’t think I’ve ever been in a home kitchen where dishes were washed with a dish cloth. Drying yes, washing nope. I usually use a green scrubbing pad (like those pictured) on dishes, pre-dishwasher, and the sponge is usually for cleaning the counter.
Which sponges are you using? Mine only last 2-3 months max.
BTW, unless you are using the highest temperature setting in your dishwasher (around 70ºC, 160ºF), it won’t be hot enough to kill the germs, the repair guy has confirmed this.
I use mine to wash pots with tomato sauce and oils, and some of that seems to be retained in the cloth no matter how often I rinse it under the faucet. So throwing it in the wash when I wash towels seems reasonable.
Sponges, on the other hand, start to crumble after a while. Scouring pads–Dobies–retain food particles inside the netting. We use shammies for the counters and wash those too.
I replace my sponges every few weeks. No set schedule – just when they start to look worn. I don’t throw them away though – the old dish sponge get used to scrub the sink, so they go into my cleaning supplies basket. The old cleaning sponge gets tossed at that point.
I don’t run the sponges through the dishwasher, nor do I nuke them. Never heard of using a dish cloth to wash dishes. I use dish clothes to wipe the counters and dry dishes (two separate cloths, of course).
I think during my college year, living alone… there just weren’t that many dishes. I remember when I was in college, I have one bowl, one plate, one pan and one pot… (possibly two plates?).
Anyway, not to sound disgusting (I hope), but when I made a meal and soup, I would just use the same bowl for the meal and then the bowl, and I only water rinse in between. I just didn’t have that many to wash.
Funny thing . Now I have many more dishes and cookware, and yet I still run out of my dishware…
I’m certainly not germ phobic and don’t nuke our sponges regularly but if you did a smear on an agar plate and incubated you would be amazed and totally grossed out to know what was living in there
This is pretty normal if you take human history as a whole. I think people seriously lack a good understanding of how good simple running water is at cleaning most things.
@scubadoo Just about anything will show bacterial growth when you culture it like that. I promise I won’t be grossed out.
meatn3
(equal opportunity eater in the NC Triangle)
38
Hmm…I refer to the smaller one (for washing) as a dish cloth and the larger (for drying) as a dish towel. I guess based on how I always heard linens for the bath differentiated - wash cloth and bath towel.