Hot take: there is no food safety reason to replace a sponge if it's still good at removing food from dishes. If you remove the food source, and the soap removes whatever is living on the dish, whatever is left over will die due to lack of nutrients and water. It's why in food safety courses you are taught that dishes have to dry completely. Even a sponge which has been used once will be depositing "new" pathogens onto the dish. Stuff is gonna live in the sponge. The sponge doesn't kill pathogens. Removal, soap, and desiccation do. The sponge's job is almost purely mechanical.
There is absolutely a food safety reason to replace a sponge. Most bacteria don't just die when they're in dry nutrient poor environments. They desiccate themselves into a spore form. Those spores can stay like that for very long periods of time until their environment becomes more wet. Then they can continue their lifecycle until they dry out again. Dry doesn't mean sterile.
I feel even better replacing a new or old sponge with a brush that will never get that awful sponge smell
I bought a few "Jetz Scrubz Scrubber Sponges". They're synthetic but suds up and work as well as real sponges. I've been swapping back and forth between two of them for 6 months and they still look feel and smell great. Most of my dishes get the dishwasher but non dw safe stuff or things that need scrubbed clean first get these used on them and then I throw it in the dishwasher as well. I use two so I still have one if the other is in the dishwasher.
5/5 sponge experience. Would recommend.
I use dawn foaming dish soap dispensers, with non-dawn soap. Suds on demand.
My brush looks like it is wishing for death. I use cloth sponges though and those are great!
I get really excited about getting new socks, I think that makes me middle aged.
It's satisfying of course... but I'm pretty sure you don't have to be over 30 to do so...
I'm under 30 and recently was delighted by a new bread knife, because now I can finally slice bread properly
