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.
Tbh we wash them and use them for really dirty stuff. Like when you need to remove mold with a chlorine spray or poop from your shoes. Then they get tossed because there's no way I am washing that again.
We're phasing out single use sponges though, but now I don't know what to use for the really dirty stuff.
Longest I ever kept a sponge for was four months it was a "I'll do it later" kind of thing, the green scrubbing part had nearly fully been removed lol.
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.
No joke at a company outing someone pointed out my socks were Darn Tough brand and he lifted up his pants to show his. Then my boss too, and we all talked about socks and lifetime warranties for 5 minutes and holy fuck I'm old. Or at least no longer young.
Just use a kitchen washcloth instead of a sponge and get a silicon gentle scrubber in addition that you can put in the dishwasher. Less microplastics and more environmentally friendly
Bro my happy time place now is hardware stores. Similarly would you believe Lowe's and home Depot around me both don't carry garage door track sections? Baffling.
That's called having a preference, and a pretty normal one. If you do have OCD then I think you should consider not simplifying it to liking things to be clean and new looking, because I imagine if it's like mine it's far more complicated and debilitating.
Yep have done this for years. Cut a corner off a sponge each time it enters its next life phase so you can easily identity the phase it's in by the way it looks.