Kitchen Science (lite)

You know that smell that creeps up on you out of the blue and all of a sudden you can't go near your kitchen sink? That smell the emanates from your sponge? The one that seeps into the pores of your skin making your hands smell like old sponge for half a day? Getting the picture? Well, I currently have that problem. Of course, the simple solution is to toss the sponge, open a new pack, and go about my dishes; but as I am learning to be less wasteful and more "thrifty" I have decided not to accept that answer (at least not yet). Google has tons of theories and methods from washing it in bleach to leaving it out in the sun for a week to praying to the god of kitchen smells while hopping on one foot backward around your sink (ok that one may be a bit of an exaggeration and perhaps a downright lie, but some of the methods out there can be just as outrageous!). So I decided to open this quandary up to the ladies of facebook and this is what I found:

• Buy a new one (I felt this one could be saved for a later date as it sort of defeated the purpose of my quest)
• Place the sponge in a mixture of boiling water and vinegar for a few minutes
• Microwave it with dish soap and water (apparently this cleans out the microwave, too; making it a double dipper of a method!)
• Place it in the washing machine when bleaching whites
• Wash it in the dishwasher (on the top rack) every other load of dishes
• Fill the sink halfway with water, add bleach, and let your sponge soak
• Reuse it for scrubbing tubs instead of dishes (while it is a thrifty approach it still makes my hands smell- at the very least this one is being placed above option 1, above)
• Wet it, wring it out, microwave for 30 seconds and voila! 

It's clear that there is no one tried and true, passed down through generations, guaranteed method to "that smell." So now we experiment!

The second half of this post is going to be filled with my attempts to weed out the answer. Stay tuned!