01.04.06
… Let’s talk about the sponge on a stick.
The sponge on a stick is that miraculous invention designed for those of us who don’t have automatic dishwashers. It’s a hollow plastic tube with a cap on one end and a handy-dandy sponge on the other. You fill it with dish soap and … ta-dah! Easy-breezy, you can teach your family to wash their own dishes instead of just tossing them into the sink (well, it works in an ideal world, I guess. In my world my daughter isn’t tall enough and my husband just plain doesn’t do it).
So … all hail the wonders of the sponge on a stick. Until the sponge end gets all yucky and gross and starts falling apart … and you have to buy refills.
Oddly enough, what you never realized when you bought your sponge on a stick in the first place is that there are several different varieties to choose from. SuperWalmartHell alone carries at least 4 different types of refill sponge heads.
If you’re anything like me, you don’t invest a lot of time thinking about sponge on a stick refills. I grabbed the first one that looked like it would fit.
A few days later – well, when it became difficult to find room to get water into the coffee maker – I started to do dishes, and remembered I had bought refills because my sponge on a stick that was beginning to have a remarkably funky smell.
The refill snapped into place.
I was cruising right along in my chore, but when I jammed the sponge end into an oddly shaped sippy-cup and twisted it around the sponge head popped right off.
This is the moment I realized I had purchased a non-compatible refill for my old faithful sponge on a stick.
I don’t know if I can even explain the sudden onset of irritability I experienced right then. I think I said a bad word. It might have been the kind of bad word I’d rather my two-year old didn’t repeat to her grandparents.
Suddenly my handy-dandy sponge on a stick is no longer a convenience.
And I wonder, “What kind of idiot came up with refills that look like they’re going to work but don’t?”
Does the competition think that I’m going to love their sponge more than my old brand so I’ll dash right out and buy a whole new hollow-tube-stick part to match?
Because this is not what’s happening. What’s happening is that I’m cursing the new brand and vowing to never ever buy anything of theirs EVER AGAIN. I am, in fact, feeling spiteful and vengeful toward that particular brand because now I have to fish the sponge head out of the bottom of the sippy-cup and snap it back into place before I can continue.
Thanks a lot, other-sponge-on-a-stick-maker people. You have thoroughly disrupted my dishwashing Zen for at least the whole day. Probably longer.
(note to readers: the dog is back already ...sigh)
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