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Through the recent years we have been searching for an alternative to the US type of dish-washing/scrubbing sponge. We used to buy a pretty big pack of name brand US Style sponges at Costco – the last package we bought lasted for about a year – but they raised the price of this product.
The brands and stores we have used for this purchase since vary, but the quality and price for this product have been very similar.
The type of dish-washing sponge most sold in the stores (what I call the US style) is a Heavy duty sponge with a Non-Scratching plastic mesh on the opposite side, made with materials from companies like 3M. These little buggers have the peculiar tendency to waste a lot of dish-washing detergent, while providing a bad enough dish-washing experience. As the time goes such type of sponges become gunky with dirt, and although still quite usable because of the high-quality heavy duty material, they become unpleasant to work with and end up being thrown away or stashed under the kitchen sink till that bright day of oven cleaning comes (once in an year 
…).
The price for 3 Big sponges (which we cut in 2 to make a six pack regular size ones) is usually $2.75 or somewhere in that realm, depending on the exact brand and store purchased from.
While shopping recently at the Goodwill store in our area we noticed a Brand New 10-pack regular sized LIGHT duty sponges with HEAVY Duty Scratching plastic mesh on the back, which we decided to try.Now we have not been impressed by the brand new items usually for sale in the Goodwill stores in the past. Items like Socks/White T-Shirts/ Underwear/Gloves/Hats/Scarves/Mattresses/ Cheap Plastic kitchenware, etc. etc. have been generally either of low quality or high (relatively speaking) price, or both. We were happily surprised by the characteristics of our new find:
Price: $1.49 for a 10-pack (compare to $2.75 for a 6-pack of brand-name sponges);
Quality: 1 Goodwill sponge lasts for more than 3 weeks – same time we’d have used the more durable name-brand sponge for;
The critical part here is how good the Heavy Duty mesh (used for scrubbing) is attached to the Light duty sponge material.
The last cheap alternative we tried (from the Dollar store nearby) used such cheap glue to attach the two materials, that the mesh came off the sponge after the FIRST time you tried to use it.Not so with these Canadian-made “European style” sponges;
Savings: The new sponges save us money on dish-washing liquid – we only have to use 1 drop of concentrated liquid for a set of 5-10 dishes (compared to a set of 3-5 dishes with the US Style sponges)
So if you wash most of your dishes by hand like we do, give these brand new Goodwill 10-pack kitchen sponges a try. You just may be pleasantly surprised with the result.
