When I was a child, I had one friend who’s mom used dishrags to wash their dishes and it made me queasy. After all, everyone used sponges to wash their dishes! Using rags seemed somehow less clean to me. I was always grossed out by it.
Mom even had a sponge rotation set up to keep everything frugal. We’d get sponges with the scrubby backs, and once a week (when we remembered, I don’t know how often we went weeks or months without doing this) the sponge was thrown in the dishwasher. When the sponge portion pleaded with us for mercy wore out, it would go under the bathroom sink to be used there to clean the sink and tub. When that sponge was replaced, there was a special spot on the far left of the counter under the bathroom sink. That’s where the “dirty sponge” used to clean the poopy chair toilet was kept. After a couple months there, that sponge was thrown out and replaced with the old sink sponge. The circle of sponge life went on.
Imagine my horror when I learned that a fairly new kitchen sponge probably harbored more, and nastier bacteria than my poopy chair toilet sponge. Let’s just say that I do my best to ignore this piece of reality for the sake of my fragile sanity … I … I forgot what I was talking about. Moving on!
I was doing my monthly budget check of trying to find where I was spending money where I could cut back, and my frugal eye fell on my use of disposable cleaning supplies. I’m a clean freak and frankly, my use of paper towels was definitely over the top. I own plenty of cleaning towels (plus the occasional ratty old bathroom towel, cut up into handy sized and edged), so why wasn’t I using them? In fact, why was I using disposable cleaning products like sponges and paper towels, anyway? What the hell was someone who was raised by hippies tries to be environmentally conscious doing with a Swiffer?
It was the ick factor. I was convinced, deep down inside, that sponges were cleaner than dish rags and that it was cleaner to throw away everything when I was finished. Since I desperately want my house to be clean, and it’s something I have mild anxiety about, I was easy pickings when it came to advertising companies convincing me that I wanted to spend lots of money on single-use products that would not only make cleaning more sanitary, but perhaps even faster, easier, and more plesant.
Well, I squared my shoulders and decided that I would examine this old notion of mine, but when I tried to research the differences between using sponges and dish rags, I kept getting drawn into websites that were about single-use sponges that you buy in bulk from the grocery store. This is, in fact, the exact opposite of what I was trying to find. It turns out that the only place I could get any information about sponges vs. dishrags was a college agricultural extension research paper that found that dishrags were actually cleaner. Everything else I could find were people like me talking about how gross dishrags were, but with nothing to back up that feeling other than…well, feelings.
I figured I wasn’t going to get any other information on the subject given that dishrags and sponges cost about as much, but the rags last just about forever and the sponges wear out very quickly. It’s not in anyone’s interest to convince me to use dishcloths. No one makes money doing it. It’s more environmentally friendly, for sure, but it’s not a big change, so no one is going to do in-depth analysis about it. There aren’t even nifty new gadets to get, like LED lightbulbs or compact florecents, so it’s not like there are a huge number of nerds with beautiful graphs telling me how much money I will spend or save. For the sake of science I needed to do a 30 day challenge and use my dishrags.
That was about two months ago. It was really, really hard at first. I may or may not have cried in the kitchen over it in the second week, but since I did give it a 30 day try, I don’t think I’ll ever switch back. I developed a system and I can tell my house is cleaner now.
I have a basket in my laundry room (which is attached to the kitchen) and I toss dirty kitchen rags in there. I do it every 2-3 days if it’s nasty, but on Fridays regardless of how clean they look. When I compare this to the all too common once a month I had been dishwashing my sponge, I’m a little embarrased. You can much more easily tell when the rags need a wash, which makes them look a little grodier in your kitchen but actually keeps everything SO MUCH CLEANER. They go into the whites load, which I only now bleach (as much as I hate dirt, I hate the smell of bleach more, and I’ve had it destroy too many things on accident already). I already had a bulk pack of Scott or 3m green scrubbies, which I cut in half. The one sheet has lasted 6 months, and the only reason I replaced it was because it got used to clean things during the move that I didn’t want rubbed on my dishes. The bathroom sponges have been replaced with rags, too, but now I use a toilet brush for the bowl of the toilet exclusively, and I swish-and-wipe the toilet with countertop spray and toilet paper that I just flush daily, so I no longer have a dirty toilet sponge in my bathroom giving me hives and nightmares that might contaminate other things under the sink.
Since the switch, I’ve been shocked to note that my dishes have actually gotten cleaner. I know that there’s fewer germs sitting around my kitchen because of my lazy-ass sponge habits. I’m no longer dropping money on sponges at the store, which is going to save me little bits of money every month to help me reach my big goals. It’s better for the environment. My bathroom is better off, too.
Everyone knows the Latte Factor is the $1-2 most people spend on stupid things that don’t actually bring them any more joy. It’s habitual spending that drains away your money in dribs and drabs- it makes your big dreams starve for funding while you’re bleeding to death throug papercuts. When I have a hard time trying something that could save me money because of some sort of irrational squeamishness, I now call that my Sponge Factor. Given how miserable I was making the switch, and how sponges have proven (in my house, with my cleaning habits- this is not an attack on anyone who uses sponges)
