How to Best Disinfect a Sponge

A kitchen sponge can tend to harbor unwanted bacteria such as salmonella, pseudomonas and E. coli. Therefore, you want to make it your mission to disinfect a sponge in the best way possible to avoid illness, especially now with COVID-19 adding to our collective misery. For this purpose, I wanted to share how to best disinfect a sponge to keep you and your family as healthy as possible.

Microwaving is a method some people use for how to disinfect a sponge. Of course, it will kill the weakest of the germs. Your sponge will probably even smell better, but recent studies have shown that the strongest and most dangerous forms of those bacteria aren’t affected and continue to grow. Being the case, this is hardly worth the risk for how to properly disinfect a sponge for the long haul.

Others feel that just lots of hot water and soap are enough to sterilize a kitchen sponge. Unfortunately, they are wrong since this moist environment could only be helping the bacteria grow in numbers.

Keep in mind that there is a distinct difference between disinfecting and sanitizing. Disinfecting will kill certain microorganisms whereas a disinfectant like bleach or a bleach alternative does that and more by killing viruses.

The best method for how to disinfect and sanitize a sponge is basically just using a few tablespoons of bleach or undiluted vinegar to soak it in for the ultimate cleaning. You can even try a homemade bleach alternative.

Regardless of the type of kitchen sponge that you use whether a cellulose material sponge that is made of wood pulp or just a scrub sponge that is composed of plastic material, but you want to also take some precautions. To better limit that spreading of germs, you can do one of two simple things. First, you stick the sponge in your dishwasher on the heated dry cycle. Another way to safeguard yourself and family is wetting it before heating it in the microwave for a minute, which will reduce some of the bacteria. More important, you don’t want to keep that sponge for weeks or months on end. Replacing it every so often such as every few weeks is safer.