For my continuing series about best cleaning products, we are back in the kitchen with the dishwand. Cleaning dishes, beverage glasses, pots, utensils, and pans must be the most frequent cleaning activity in a typical household. Even if you have an automatic dishwasher, there are still a lot of items that need to be cleaned manually.

dishwands in sink

Dishwands and a Scrigit Scraper

In the house where I grew up, we had dual kitchen sinks. At cleaning time, one sink would be filled with soapy water and the other would be used for rinsing off the washed items. Later on, the houses I lived in had single sinks. At first, I used a plastic tub placed in the sink to hold the soapy water, but this was a nuisance. One day, my wife brought home a Libman dish sponge. This clever cleaning tool has a replaceable sponge at one end of a hollow handle that holds the liquid dish soap. This way, a soapy sponge is always readily available for cleaning your kitchen items, whether you just have a couple of items or a whole sink full. Admittedly, this is not the most water-efficient method for cleaning a lot of items since the water is usually left running during the ongoing washing and rinsing operation. For large amounts of cleaning, you still might want to use a plastic tub for the washing water or just use the largest fairly clean bowl or pot, such as one used to boil pasta, for the soapy water. Let your smaller items soak in this container until you are ready to clean them.

Soap-filled dishwands are made by many different manufacturers and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. The green-handled wand in the photo is the Libman Dish Sponge that I usually use. The type of refill sponge has varied over the years. The one in the photo has a yellow sponge base with a green scrubber pad attached. I usually use the other style currently available that has a light green sponge base with a yellow sponge pad. I prefer this yellow sponge pad version because it is more flexible and conforms better to more surface shapes. The Libman sponge has a built-in scraper that is good for flat surfaces, but the Scrigit Scraper can get into edges, corners and grooves, so it is very helpful to use along with the wand. Also shown in the photo is the Scotch-Brite Dishwand, which does not include a scraper, so the Scrigit Scraper is even more essential for speeding up the cleaning process. One last note, I suggest that you use an antibacterial liquid dish soap with these dishwands to keep mold from growing on the perpetually wet sponge. Overall, I think the soap-filled dishwand is one of the best cleaning products.