What do you do with the sponge after washing the dishes?

Here ya go...

http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=90683

I haven't worried about bacteria... since the dishes are dishes and my family is my family. I doubt that the bacteria in a dish sponge is any real health risk.

I rinse out the sponge well and change it when I feel like it (I am guessing every week or so).

Sponges in our house follow a progression. Each starts out as a dishes sponge (where it is stored on its side on a little self-draining sponge holder. Then they become counter sponges (kept on the side of the counter).

They may pass through a floor sponge stage (although we don't need a floor sponge very often).

Then sponges become bathroom sponges... which is wear they go to die.

My 7th grade Home Ec teacher made sure I would never have a sponge in my house. Her teaching on that matter was quite disgusting.

I've heard that, while still wet, you can put it in the microwave for one minute and that kills anything that may be harmful.

I've heard of people with dishwashers running it through with the dishes, but I imagine that only works with a very hot / sanitation setting or heated dry... which doesn't help you since you are handwashing.

And, there's the option of bleach. Dilute 50/50 or so and use the water to wipe out the sink and clean the sponge at the same time. Just be careful when you wring it out not to get it on your clothes and then wash your hands real good.

A-HA! Good helpful info! I especially liked ebrown's "life of a sponge." Interesting.

Bacteria are part of nature. After all, have evolved together with them for millions of years. Natures solution is not microwaves... but a healthy immune system.

The silly part is... that when you get rid of all bacteria from your sponge, you are going to see some sensational TV exclusive about bacteria in your car AC, or your phone or the doorknobs in your work place.

If you keep overreacting we will walk around with gloves and face masks and stop eating yogurt.

It is really silly if you think about it.

The damaging part is that some of the "solutions" (mostly things they want to sell you base don your irrational fear) are harmful. Scientists are saying that anti-bacteria products they currently sell actually make it more likely for you to get sick.

If you want to get rid of yucky bacteria... good luck. Bacteria are part of the world we live in, most bacteria live happily with us with no harm and there are some bacteria we depend on.

If the goal is to keep from getting sick (a perfectly good goal) To do this, washing your hands, eating healthy food and getting enough sleep are perfectly logical things to do.

Obsessing about germs in sponges is not going to do anything to lower your risk of getting sick (and may increase your risk because of the added stress).

I have that same life of a sponge routine. I suppose I should do the microwave thing in the link once in a while, at stage 1. But I'm not very bacteriophobic.

I am careful with uncooked meat and its juices, especially of prepackaged ground beef - and am growing more conscious of veggie terror, goodgod, jalapenos? But that has affected me mainly to keep the raw chuck roast, say, in its paper wrapping from the butcher and not dribble it all over the place. This consciousness sits side by side with my purported interest in really good steak tartare. What an enigma..

Well, my major at the university was bacteriology. I am probably the least bacteriophobic person I know, given my understanding of the natural flora, but in certain situations I see plenty of reason for caution. Hospitals, for example, with rampant mrsa (methcillin resistant staph aureus). And that is showing up in locker rooms and gyms now too. With family members going through chemotherapy, with people with generally low immunoresistance..


But ... generally I'm more fearful of all the products with bacteriostatic properties on our grocery shelves than I am of bacteria.

This bacteria talk reminds me of those people who walk around on the streets and in the subway wearing those surgical masks. I always wonder if they have some kind of immune system disfunction, or if they are really just that paranoid. I don't care, myself. I once ate a piece of chicken after it fell off my plate and onto the sidewalk at an outdoor cafe. I imagine the mask-people would just about have a seizure if they saw that.

Did you follow the five-second rule?

Did we have a thread about that? I think that's actually been tested. Hah, I forget the outcome, but have a feeling it corroborated the five second business.

I used to see a woman with a mask in a big old Santa Monica thrift store. My guess is she had asthma - clothes have a lot of dust and dust mites.

It has, but it did not.

I am careful with meat juices. I have on occasion boiled sponges after cleaning up meat (the trick is to keep them weighted down with a spoon).

I remember being surprised at the outcome, and I would have bet whatever was dropped would pick up bacteria... not that I usually care. Waves potato chip in air.

Memories of autoclaves of my past.. eek, they scared me. I was happier with high speed centrifuges and freezing things in liquid nitrogen and -70 freezers you could somehow get locked in to, back then.

My friend is a professor with a PhD in microbiology. He recounts a time in his education where he became paranoid of germs and obsessed with cleanliness (he says this is typical of graduate students) after learning how prevalent germs were.

Then he really learned how prevalent they really are, and he relaxed and is now not germaphobic at all.

Did you have this experience?

Right away, in Bacti 1A (which I took because when I "ran for classes" all the ones I ran for were closed) they had us swab our inner elbows and plate the swab. Heh. I was disabused from fear city right away. Of course there were later bacti classes where we covered pathogens and had to have various innoculations to participate...

I had a little setback in my cockiness re the microbial world when I read Sinclair Lewis' Aerosmith. Nearly put me off of cigarettes at the time.

I am very OCD about touching a doorhandle or a door opener bar at a convenience store or a public restroom.

Imagine you are at a restaurant. You go to the bathroom, do your task, then wash your hands and then open the door to leave. Youve infested yourself with foreign germs from everyone on the planet and everyone they came in contact with.
I wash my hands and wipe with a towel. I then take another towel and open the door with it and toss the towel in a wastereceptacle as the door closes behind me. The only reason I wont eat at McDonalds (besides the ratty food) is that they have those damn air blowers that only warm the bacteria and shoot em all over your warm moist hands. Why not just dip your hands in a warm agar culture and then going back and eating your breakfast media.?


F**K your sponge kicky. My wife washes dishes before she sticks em in the washer. If you wash your dishes you should wash, rinse, then sanitize with some snaitizing solution. E Brown is right of course, but I dont pull the mask off the lone ranger.

I know what you mean about the doorhandle. There aren't many more disgusting things than grabbing the door handle to leave a restroom and finding that the last person out has left it all wet. I imagine being a woman and falling halfway into the toilet when your man leaves the toilet seat up would be a little bit worse, but not much.

Pah.