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Without a dishwasher to clean them, the sponges in our house tend to become stinky fairly quickly. Too quickly, it seems, but when faced with the extremes of using a sponge that smells so bad that it sends foul wafts from your fingertips for the rest of the day, or of throwing out sponges before they show a single sign of physical deterioration, it's hard to find a consistent middle ground. So it was with much excitement that I read this article yesterday: sterilized and non-stinky sponges are well within my grasp! Conundrum solved!

After finishing the dishes last night, I wrung the excess water out the wet sponge and popped it in the microwave, setting it for 2:30 on high. After putting some dishes away, I picked up an empty water bottle from my desk in the office, then returned to find clouds of billowy smoke pluming from the vents in the microwave. I hit the STOP button and shouted to Pete, already in bed:

"Pete! The sponge is smoking!"

"Is it smoking? Or just steaming?"

"It's ON FIRE. Get out here."

After a minute spent fumbling for his glasses and a series of elaborate God,-I-Can't-Believe-I-Have-To-Get-Out-Of-Bed sighs, Pete emerged from the bedroom. He stared in groggy perplexity at the smoking microwave.

"Get the oven mitt!" I shrieked. "Throw it outside!" Why I was incapable of doing these things myself, I'm not sure, but I generally defer my first instincts about what to do in the case of fire and stuff to the authority of the person who spends his days working in a lab and soldering things.

After processing this suggestion for a few seconds, Pete opened the microwave door, grabbed the flaming sponge with a silicone oven mitt and threw it into a porcelain dinner plate, then hurled it out the back door into a snow bank where, later inspection revealed, it continued to smolder and ash for another 15 minutes. I turned on the ceiling fan and opened the screened portion of the storm door for ventilation, casting wary glances at the brand-new fire alarm that our neighbor installed last week. 30 minutes with the door open and fan going seemed to disburse a lot of the smoke, but I slept uneasily all night, catching pungent wafts of burned plastic and having dreams that our smoke detector was actually a smell-detector and was about to screech us out of house and home.

Now that we've spent half a day ventilating, microwave-cleaning, and burning a whole lot of strong-smelling tarts, it still reeks of nasty in here. We're going to pick up some lemons soon to boil in water, but this brings me to my point: better a stinky sponge than a stinky apartment.

But I bet that's one thoroughly sterilized torched sponge.

Hah! That exact thing happened at my house about a year ago. Except it was my boyfriend who started the sponge fire in the microwave (and we used it as an excuse to splurge on a new microwave after that -- that SMELL! ack!).

Microwaving sponges definitely works (gets rid of smells, and, I've always assumed, germs), but MY GOD -- TWO MINUTES? My microwave can cook frozen meat in that amount of time. Ok, slight exaggeration, but still.

Don't give up on the microwaving, but leave some water in the sponge (not dripping wet, but _definitely_ wet), then try something more along the lines of 30-45 seconds. And watch it the whole time. Oh, and then DON'T grab the sponge with your hands. Because it's not fun explaining to people that you burned your hand on a wet sponge. Not that I would know from experience or anything. ;)

I leave the sponge soaking wet and microwave it for three minutes without problems. Apparently you're not alone in causing the sponge to smoke:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/01/24/germs.sponges.reut/index.html

When I make tea on say, Saturdays, when I have time to occupy myself with thoughts of stinky sponges, I put on some extra water. I pour some into my teacup, the rest onto the sponges. It works best if I have more than one cup of tea, but the stink definitely goes away for a while... and no smoke involved.

I did this with a sponge that was not only soaking well but straight from washing dishes in the sink, so soapy as well. As the sponge microwaved, a mountain of soapy bubbles emerged and then deflated. Quite fun for my husband to watch, apparent from the comments I heard as I walked away to do something else.