Dish Mitt

As a stay at home mom I'm doing dishes and laundry all the time.  It seems like the time it takes to fill and empty the dishwasher I could have done them all by hand!  I've started getting into the habit of filling the sink in the morning with hot soapy water and just tossing in dirty dishes as they happen, which is a lot!

I don't like using sponges because they seem a little germy to me.  The dish brushes are great but they seem to get full of bits and pieces.  I"m already a little weird about wet food in the sink and yucky stuff like that so it just doesn't seem like a sanitary idea.

My kitchen is a pretty low toxin place.  I use non-toxic dishwasher soap, dish washing soap (yes, there is a difference!).  I use vinegar in the rinse aid container in the dishwasher and tend to clean the countertops with a hydrogen peroxide based cleaner. I also use cloths to wipe the kids hands and faces and generally to wipe down everything.  I have a small laundry basket in the kitchen that I toss the cloths into and wash about 3 times a week.  It's from the dollar store and not very solid so the cloths tend to try pretty quickly.

And that brings me to washing dishes with a wash cloth.  All of the cloths that we have for that purpose are way too big.  About 10"x10".  I feel like there is so much extra fabric flopping around that I spend the time trying to get the cloth under control!

I was staring at this giant cloth yesterday and it hit me.  Cut them into smaller squares.  So 4 5"x5" squares were cut.  Then I realized that I could sew them together and make a dish mitt!  After fighting with my sewing machine (both of the threads ran out at the same time!) I made this handy dandy little mitt.  If my machine had been more helpful it wouldn't have taken more than a few minutes.

I also realized too late that I only needed to cut them into 2 rectangles and sew up one side but hey, this is an 'on the fly' project!

Cut, turn inside out, sew along two sides. 

Flip right side out!

It sits on the faucet perfectly and dries really well.

What is YOUR favorite dish tool?