Why My Mother Boiled Dish Rags (The Filipino Way)

Your dish rag came out of the wash two days ago. Wipe the counter with it, then smell your own hand. That smell is not dirt, and a new sponge will not fix it. A kitchen rag and a kitchen sponge go sour for the same reason, and it is not the reason you think. They never dry all the way through. A cellulose sponge is built to hold water. The firms that make them advertise it, up to 20 times its own weight. So today I show you what my mother did in Batangas instead: a cotton basahan, a weekly boil in the kaldero, the pot the rice was cooked in, and a line in the sun. You get the whole method in order. The boil, the wring, the line, and the second rag in rotation, plus the one thing you must never drop into that pot. Then go and boil your own rags and watch what color the water turns.