I Have Joined the Cult of the Scrub Daddy

This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live.

We don’t have a dishwasher, so over the years my husband and I have tried to implement some dish-washing “hacks” to make hand-washing less miserable. My husband, for example, came up with “the rule”: Every time you bring your dish to the sink, you have to wash it and two others (say, the pan left over from eggs that morning, and a stray cup). The rule is good in theory, but we don’t follow it consistently, which is how we end up with a sink full of dishes in the first place. Every two weeks or so, one of us will announce, “The rule is in place today,” and we’ll be good about dishwashing for … a few hours. More successfully, I’ve gotten into the habit of propping my phone up on the window in front of the sink and watching dumb Netflix shows as a little treat while I work through towers of unwashed plastic food containers.

But the most successful hack we have found is called Scrub Daddy.

The cleaning company was featured on Shark Tank in 2012 and has since become one of the show’s most successful alumni. More recently, TikTok has caught Scrub Daddy fever. But my Scrub Daddy origin story is this: One day my husband, who regularly checks Costco’s website for new arrivals, dragged me to the cleaning section of the store with the promise of “something I think you’ll like.”

I wasn’t immediately convinced. The sponges felt really hard—like, “scrape the Teflon off your pan” hard—and to be honest, the marketing made me feel weird. Plus, this was Costco. Did we really want to commit to six sponges with sorta uncomfortable marketing and haunting smiles?

But also: I was desperate. The promise of a better scrubbing experience was irresistible.

We opted for a variety pack, which included three sponge models. There’s “Scrub Daddy,” the original smiling father composed entirely of stiff, plastic-y foam (the company has trademarked this as FlexTexture). The “Scrub Mommy,” also smiling, is divided into two: The top half is the abrasive-ish FlexTexture, the bottom half a better version of a normal yellow sponge (the company calls this ResoFoam). Finally, there’s “Sponge Daddy,” which has the same half-and-half style of Scrub Mommy but is shaped like a normal rectangle sponge.

The company’s primary claim to fame is that its FlexTexture foam stays hard in cold water but gets soft in warm water, and is tough enough to really scrub without scratching your dishes. This basically checks out for me, and I’ve found the Scrub Daddy useful for dishes that are really gunked up or have stubborn crevices of grime (think: blenders). You can also theoretically maneuver spoons and other utensils in and out of its mouth for an easier clean, and stuff your fingers into its eyes for a better grip—something I have done maybe twice.

Honestly, I find myself using the Sponge Daddy the most often. It’s easy to maneuver because it has the same shape and basic design of the sponges I’ve always used, and it gives you the option of the rougher scrubber or the gentler foam. And the yellow “ResoFoam” really is good: It’s springier than a regular sponge and reminds me of a mattress topper you can sink your fingers into. Perhaps most miraculously, my first Sponge Daddy lasted a good two and a half months before I had to swap it out last week.

The joy of the Sponge Daddy isn’t that it’s a fundamentally different kind of sponge; it’s just a better version of a regular sponge. It is the only sponge I’ve ever used that hasn’t (really) started to smell, that doesn’t trap food, and that makes me feel a little less dread about dishwashing.