Does your cat do this? Every night while we sleep, our cat jumps up onto the sink, steals the wet dishwashing sponge, and then makes off with it. We find it in the morning underneath one of our desks, or in the middle of the floor, wet spots and a foaming cat not far away. One of the many reasons why...

...I hate to wash dishes. I hate to cook. In light of these two facts, it is odd how I, without fail, cook dinner for myself and my fiance and then wash the dishes every single night. We used to have this rule that when one person would cook, the other would do the dishes. That rule has fallen by the wayside, never to return. Have I lost my edge? Maybe. Domestic life can do that to you.

Back to hating to wash dishes. Our tiny apartment does not feature a dishwasher, an appliance that I have missed achingly these past two years as I grudgingly hand-wash each and every darn dish that we dirty. Obviously a distraction is needed to make the process less tedious and myself less whiny. Enter the Palmolive Dish Wipes.

Let me make it clear that this is something that I would normally not dream of buying. Although it is seductively advertised as something that will improve your quality of life, I was a little skeptical. While flattered that someone out there thought that I was too good to squeeze a bit of dishwashing liquid into running hot water, I also did not feel like paying extra for the privilege. But I had a $1.00 coupon, they were on sale for 2/$4.00 and I bought one. Double coupons make items free, me happy, and things are tried. Yay.

The product itself is pretty simple, and one has to admit, time-saving. You take one of the soap saturated cloths from the container, run it under the hot water, and then wash. The cloths are pretty sturdy and do not tear, but they are also soft and did not irritate my hands. One side was slightly abrasive, for getting off the rough spots. I was actually surprised at how quickly the sink filled up with suds and how long the suds lasted.

They also wash amazingly well. Maybe because the soap is right there working on the food stuck to the plates, but everything was coming off much more easily than I would have imagined. Now mind you, I am not in the habit of welding food onto the pots and pans when I cook, so nothing was caked-on too horribly, but some of those dishes had been sitting there for a day or so, so not everything was terribly fresh either. When I had a tough spot, I simply washed gently with the cloth over it a few times, it loosened and came off. It was like lemon-scented magic.

I managed to do quite a large load of dishes before the soap seemed to be used up, and then I did as the package suggested and wiped down my counters with the cloth. It was easy and seemed to clean them well, so another plus. When I was done, I threw the cloth away. The next morning, my cat looked at me with sadness as he realized that I had robbed him of his precious spongey goodness.

But lest my alluring tale of lemony freshness sway you too readily, be warned: there are two cons. The first is of course, price. What price convenience? Quite a lot actually, when you consider how much liquid dishwashing soap costs (not a whole heck of a lot). There are enough sheets in there to do maybe a months worth of washing. It does seem a bit more sanitary than using the same sponge every night, especially if your cat salivates on it with regularity, as mine does.

The second con is, I have no idea how ecologically sound this is. Do these things biodegrade? Will the soap create mutant insects and rodents that will spread out from the city dump and take over the world? Okay, probably not. It is also hard to believe that a company such as Palmolive in this day and age would also not take into consideration the environment when making a product. It does however, seem a little bit of a waste to me.

Aside from those two flaws however, my encounter with the wipes left me largely unscathed. The only thing that would have made my life easier was if they had come alive Mary Poppins-style and done my dishes for me. If you were inspired by my daring tale of soapy adventure, feel free to truck on over to palmolive.com to print out a $.75 coupon and try them out for yourself.

Recommended: Yes