Best Sponges to Make Quick Work of Your Stubborn Food Messes

This sponge was oddly nice to hold. The gray polyurethane material was smooth and bouncy-feeling, and the sponge was incredibly lightweight despite how dense the polyurethane foam appeared. 

Its scrubby side, for tougher-to-clean jobs, was rough like sandpaper. But because it was thin, the sponge stayed flexible, making it easy to clean the inside of wineglasses (even the bottom corners of the squarish-shaped ones we used). And it excelled at cleaning caked-on scrambled eggs and thick, starchy rice stuck to a pan. 

The color of the scrubby side fades with time to indicate when you need to replace it. Bonus: The company was founded by a woman and counts the actress Eva Mendes as an owner.

Sponges aren’t typically something one buys with aesthetics as a primary concern, but the Blueland Scrub Sponge manages to be cute in an all-natural, organic kind of way. The scrubby side is made of a thick layer of beige compostable loofah. The soft side is sky-blue, all-natural cellulose certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, meaning that it comes from responsibly managed forests.

It’s cute and eco-friendly, yes, but it also performs. I had little trouble removing rice stuck in a pot, and it was competent at scraping eggs off a stainless steel pan. It also did beautifully on a burn mark on one of the rice pots. It only faltered when I washed a wineglass because that thick loofah layer made it a bit less flexible than most. But as I continued to use the sponge, its flexibility increased without losing its scrubbing power. Though I prefer the Skrubby sponge for wineglasses, I’d use the Blueland without complaint. I estimate I’d spend, oh, 10 extra seconds cleaning a wineglass with the Blueland sponge compared with the Skura Skrubby, which is to say, the difference is pretty minimal.

This sponge has a thick layer of walnut scrubbing material that makes it look inflexible—but it’s not. Although the Walnut Scrubber Sponge wouldn’t be my No. 1 choice for wineglasses, it wouldn’t be my last because, with a bit of maneuvering, I was able to clean every inch of my annoyingly shaped wineglass. I didn’t have any problem removing rice and eggs from stainless steel pans, although the sponge wasn’t quite as expedient as the Skrubby at sloughing the congealed rice starch from the pot. The scrubber is plant-based, but the soft part is made from recycled polyester fiber.

The Scotch-Brite Zero Scratch is an S-shaped sponge with a scrubby side made from 100 percent recycled plastic. The curved shape allowed for easier access into small or hard-to-reach areas, and I found that with the exception of the Skrubby and the Blueland, it was best for cleaning wineglasses. It was less impressive when it came to stuck-on rice and required more elbow grease than several of the other sponges. 

The fine print on these sponges notes that despite the name “Zero Scratch,” you’re not supposed to use them on stainless steel appliances. I didn’t see any scratching or damage on my stainless steel pots and pans, though. You’ll also want to avoid using these sponges in aquariums.

The Scrub Family of sponges is large. As in, the sponges are big. The Sponge Mommy is round and about the size of my hand from palm to fingertips, and although my hands are small, I’d say that’s large for a sponge.

This is good for some things, like cleaning a baking sheet, but not as good for others—like wineglasses. My baby’s tiny silicone cups? Forget it. The Scrub Mommy barely fit, and it was hard to maneuver it into the cup’s corners to wipe up any milk lingering there. 

Unlike the Scrub Daddy (which we also reviewed below), the Scrub Mommy is dual-sided; one side is made from a proprietary polymer foam called FlexTexture that changes texture depending on the temperature of the water. The other is a more spongy foam that the company calls ResoFoam. 

The scrubby FlexTexture side does get more pliable in hot water but not enough to make more challenging dishwashing tasks like wineglasses easy. I worried about breaking the thin rim when squeezing my hand and the Scrub Mommy into the wineglass (I didn’t). Bigger hands would probably have even more trouble.

This is another “natural” sponge that, unlike the options from Blueland and Grove Collaborative, won’t be finding a permanent spot in my kitchen. The scrubby side was as thick and stiff as a piece of cardboard and as difficult to maneuver. It did well at scrubbing eggs and rice off the flat surface of a pan but it was difficult to get into the pan’s corners. I struggled to clean a wineglass, eventually giving up. 

These vivid blue sponges resemble the Scotch-Brite product, but they don’t hold a candle to Scotch-Brite’s power. These soft, dual-sided sponges began to pill and fray after only a single use. By the end of the evaluation period, which lasted two full workdays of dishwashing time, the scrubby side was lifting and peeling off the soft side of the sponge as if it’d been in use for weeks. 

I needed to apply some effort when scrubbing stuck-on rice. The sponge was better at cleaning the wineglass because it was soft enough to be squeezed into the corners. A note: Amazon mentions that these sponges shouldn’t be used in aquariums.

Although Scrub Daddy looked cute in my sink, unfortunately, he didn’t perform. This sponge was less successful than others at scrubbing away stuck-on rice, although I was able to work at the pan that held the scrambled egg without total heartbreak. The wineglass was another matter. Like Scrub Mommy, the Scrub Daddy is big and inflexible, even when used with hot water, and I struggled to fit it into the glass and get at the wine that remained.