1. Cut them in half before using and presto, you instantly double your sponge’s life.
2. Squeeze them out after using them and stand them on their small edge so that the maximum surface area is exposed. They’ll air dry much faster.
3. When the sponge starts to get a nasty smell — throw it in boiling water for about 5 minutes. (Better than microwaving — the smell is GONE from the sponge without making your microwave or house smell.)
4. When it’s just too dirty to use as a dish sponge anymore, take it to something else — your bathroom, your floors, or whatever dirty job you would throw a sponge away after anyway.

Back to the point, I clean my sponge in the dishwasher as well.

I’ll just go for disinfecting the dish sponge and using it for a month. The nasty ones I use for counter-tops – I’ll throw away every two weeks.

The other sponge is used to clean dishes etc.

Occasionally I’ll give the nasty sponge a rinse under the tap, and put the dish sponge in boiling water a couple of times. Easy.

I also dispose of the clean sponge every couple of months and get a new one.

I keep two sponges around.

One washes dishes for 2-6 months depending on how dirty it gets, and then it goes into phase two: counter duty. No sterilization takes place til the sponge gets assigned to clean the counters with 409.

I also eat food slightly past expiration, and I routinely under-cook non-expired meats. I get sick maybe twice every three years.

I want to tell you all a story. My grandfather was a doctor, and he had a colleague who was deathly afraid of germs. He sanitized everything, kept his whole house sterile. He went through great pains to keep germs as far away from himself as he could. Know how he died? He caught something his immune system should have been able to handle. Unfortunately, it was too busy loafing around, munching potato chips, to be of any use.

Here’s another bit of info for all you germaphobes out there. An average American traveling to foreign countries will get sicker than a dog by eating some of the local cuisine. The locals are unaffected. Why? Because their immune systems are healthy and strong.

Vaccinations are just vials full of viruses. Sure, they’re neutered so they can’t hurt you much, but the basic principle behind them is that they give your immune system a workout and get it used to that particular virus.

Unless you’re immunodeficient, save medicines and disinfectants for when they’re really needed–illnesses with real potential for death or damage, and pools of chicken blood.