Happy Monday guys! How was everyone’s weekend? Mike and I went down to San Diego for the day yesterday, so I’m spending today getting organized. We have a 750 square foot apartment, and I swear, one thing on the ground makes the entire place look chaotic.

Mike and I are both used to single family homes in the suburbs of Illinois, so apartment living is very new to us. We’ve really had to make a conscious effort to keep things tidy so it doesn’t feel like our stuff is consuming us.

Another thing about apartment living that I wasn’t prepared for? No dishwasher. Seriously – had you said this to me while I was living in Schaumburg, I would have told you it was a deal breaker, and no way would I rent an apartment that didn’t have a dishwasher.

Flashforward to a really great rent rate in a city where your rent can easily take up 75% of your income, and I’m singing a different tune.

Not having a dishwasher isn’t convenient, but we’re making it work, and we’re motivated by the amount of money we’re saving. But not having a dishwasher has also upped my reliance on sponges and dish soap. I was about to buy a little dish on which I could rest my sponge when SpongeBath reached out to me asking if I’d like to give their product a try.

Not going to lie to you – I kind of laughed at first. A bath for my sponge? I’d like five minutes to soak in a tub, and THEN we can talk about my cleaning utensils. But never the less, I gave it a try.

You guys – my sponges don’t smell anymore. I swear to you – ever since we started soaking our sponges in between uses, that moldly “there may still be chunks of tortilla soup” smell on the sponges has completely disappeared. Let me tell you – for two people relying on sponges and dish soap to keep everything clean, I stopped laughing at this product very quickly.

It’s super easy to use – fill up the bath to the FILL line, add a tablespoon or so of the solution, and dunk!

No more smelly sponges sitting on your countertops. I would say that alone makes for a pretty productive Monday.