If you don't have a dishwasher, how often do you replace your dish sponges?

[conuly]

Poll #20610 Sponge questions

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 82

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So how often do you replace your sponges?

View Answers

More than once a week
1 (1.3%)

Once a week
3 (3.9%)

Two or three times a month
8 (10.4%)

Once a month
11 (14.3%)

Once every six to eight weeks or so
16 (20.8%)

Once every three or four months
6 (7.8%)

Even less often!
4 (5.2%)

Never
0 (0.0%)

IDK, I think the magical sponge fairies do this for me
10 (13.0%)

Other
18 (23.4%)

Are your sponges plain sponges, or do they have scrubbies on one side?

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Plain sponges
7 (8.8%)

Scrubbies on one side
60 (75.0%)

I don't use sponges at all
18 (22.5%)

Do you use the term "scrubbies"?

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Yes
27 (33.8%)

For some abrasive cleaning things, not others and I'll clear this up in the comments
6 (7.5%)

No, but I know what you mean, I use another term I'll specify in the comments
38 (47.5%)

I am utterly unfamiliar with this term
9 (11.2%)

What are your cleaning sponges and/or scrubbies made of?

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I have no idea
26 (32.1%)

Something petrochemical, I guess
47 (58.0%)

Actual sponges
1 (1.2%)

Plant materials!
2 (2.5%)

Other
7 (8.6%)

I don't use sponges
11 (13.6%)

(For reference, this is what I usually mean by scrubbie though the ones I'm using now are from Whole Foods and made of plant materials. Were it made of metal I'd call it steel or copper wool. Also, the sponges I'm using I got from Trader Joes and they expanded in water, which was nifty to watch. If I could get expanding sponges with the scrubbies attached I'd be in dishwashing heaven, inasmuch as people have to wash dishes in heaven.)

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Comments

[alias_sqbr]

I realise I'm skewing things with my weird Australian dialect but I'd say "scourer".

Also the changing roster is half the magical sponge fairies and half "when it looks gross", as it happens I changed mine yesterday but I honestly couldn't tell you whether the time before that was within the last month or two, or sometime last year. TIME IS AN ILLUSION.

[lilly_c]

I call that the scourer

[nostalgia]

I cannot touch a sponge, I use green scourers.

[highlyeccentric]

I call the scrubby stuff 'scourer' (Australian). The scrubber is sometimes this thing, although that's an adult weirding of my dialect. I grew up using the brush and a scourer and no sponge.

[marahmarie]

Scrubbies, no; I call them scrubbers.

I also differentiate between the one pictured (green) and a similar one (blue); the blue one's supposed to be gentler so I get the green one when I can because everything's hard enough to scrub without having to grab my Brillo because the scrubber won't scrub hard enough.

Also, variants: I used to use the kind in your picture, but have since upgraded (if you can call it that; it has its own drawbacks) to the same thing but on a handle.

[cesy]

Yes, they're scourers in my part of the UK, and I similarly go by when it looks gross.

No sponge

[moem]

I use a brush that looks like this:

It's what most folks use in this country. They can be desinfected in bleach, and if you get a decent quality like this one, they last for months.

[gingicat]

I toss them into the dishwasher when they look disgusting, and I keep one aside that can dry out and therefore be safe for hand washing things.

[merridia]

I use SOS pads, they just fall apart when they're ready to die. And I don't think I have a term for the scrubbing/scouring side of a sponge? It's just... the scrubbing/scouring side.

[moxie_man]

"Old Fashion" cotton dish clothes. After three days, they go in the laundry. When they get really nasty, they get bleached. For stubborn things stuck to the dishes/pots, I use a combination of the green scour pads (what you call a scrubbie) and copper pad depending on the pot and the stubborn stuck thing on said pot.

I'm also not afraid to use the "three pot" method to wash my dishes as we do on scout camping trips: Wash, rinse, and sterilize in bleach water. I usually only resort to this when one or the other of us in the house is sick.

[glinda]

I call the scrubbie things scourers (not to be confused with pot scourers which are more like plastic wire wool things) and they are the big guns of my dishwashing, for stubborn stuff. I like those sponges with a scouring pad/scrubbie on the back as a more flexible dish washer. I generally change them whenever they start to look a bit manky, so they get changed more in winter as they get heavier usage with stews and curries and pasta bakes than they do in summer.

[sabotabby]

I just got a new things that's from Sweden that is really pretty, supposedly effective and launderable, and just decomposes in the compost when it's done. We'll see how it goes.

[miss_s_b]

I would never use a sponge for washing dishes, I use a cotton open weave dishcloth, specifically because sponges harbour germs, and dishcloths are really easy to toss in the washing machine.

(we do have a dishwasher, but we also have handwash-only items of glassware etc)

[miss_s_b]

Scouring pad here.

[miss_s_b]

* high five for a fellow dishcloth user *

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah I've heard that one too.

[gale_storm]

Scouring thingies out of the corners of things that had been heated too high for too long are just referred to as 'scouring thingies' by me. Not that I've washed dishes for ages, anyway. One of the teensy-tiny benefits of having MS. Okay, the only benefit.

[gatheringrivers]

I use "scrubbing" washclothes (they have a plastic layer of netting on one side) and generally throw them in the bucket to wash every day or two, and run a weekly load of them.

I have "scrubbies" - green scrubbies like you linked, and some copper ones for stubborn things - both of which go in the dishwasher every few uses so they don't get too gross.

I haven't used a sponge for dishes since I was in my early 20's, before I moved out of my parents house. They always get SO gross and I'd have to keep buying replacements.

Wash and reuse for the win!

[brokenallbroken]

Another for dish cloths here.

I have a thing that looks like a tiny toilet brush for tall glasses and really stubborn stuck-ons.

[rebeccmeister]

Me too, for scouring pad. We've tried the biodegradable alternatives (including growing our own loofahs), but they aren't quite as effective as the plastic scouring pads, sigh.

For most of our dishwashing, we use a hand-knit or hand-crocheted cotton dish rag. Dish rags get thrown in the laundry once a week, so they last a long time and don't get as foul as a sponge.

I also keep a plastic scrub brush handy that has a scraping edge on it.

[julian]

Calluna calls 'em scrubbers; I just realized I never really had a term for it. (I mean, I call the metal ones you get separately scouring pads, but the ones attached to sponges aren't as strong and so I wouldn't call them that.)

So now: I call them scrubbies, thanks!

Edit: Also, I toss them when they start looking problematic.

[miss_s_b]

Oh, I meant that is what I would call one. I don't tend to use them though.

I generally use a cotton dishcloth (see below) but yes, I too have a brush with a scraping edge for the real hard cases.

[topaz_eyes]

We use dishcloths mainly. Sponges get gross after only a few uses.

We switch out dishcloths, scrubbies and dish towels frequently. One member of Chez Topaz has celiac disease, so we switch out when there's potential for cross-contamination.

[batwrangler]

Scrubbies are coarser than "sponges" and probably petrochemical if they are not metal while sponges are either natural sponge or cellulose. I use sponges, dish clothes, scrubbies, and various brushes depending on what I am cleaning. I generally zap the (well-saturated with water) sponges for 90 seconds at a time a couple of times a week, especially if they are not drying out between uses, and pitch them when they get worn or look gross (or if an older one gets used to clean up something noxious).

[redsixwing]

Dishcloths and a scrubbing brush. I have a dishwasher, but also a lot of things that last longer/do better when hand washed, so I do a lot of washing up by hand.

The brush has a bamboo handle and apparently bamboo-derived bristles, although there's been enough fraud about bamboo-derived polymers recently that I'm not sure how much I believe that. When it falls apart, the handle can be put out in the brushpile and composted. The brush head will probably get tossed, but it's a step less garbage than an all-plastic brush, and like the example above, they're easy to sanitize.