Swedish Dishcloths for Kitchen Grey 10 Pack Reusable Compostable Kitchen Cloth Made in Sweden Cellulose Sponge Swedish Dish Cloths for Washing Dishes Reusable Paper Towels Washable

I love these dishcloths. My sister didnt like the looks of them (stff until wet) but shes sold now, too! Really works well on countertops. Washed up well, too, and sturdy.

First, this is called a dishcloth. It is similar to a dishcloth in absolutely no way. A dishcloth is flexible; this is either stiff like cardboard when dry or soggy and floppy. A dishcloth is large; this is a little rectangle, about half the size of a sheet of letter paper. A dishcloth is absorbent; this can absorb some water-based liquids and then will spread the rest around; it is a weak performer at absorbing oil-based and other spills. A dishcloth lasts for years; this supposedly lasts through multiple washings but not for decades like my good dishcloths. A really great cloth for cleaning up messes, if you want to be kinder to the planet than the paper towel hog, is called a rag. When I grew up, we used old clothes, towels and linens that could no longer be mended. These were laundered separately and reused. We didnt import sponges from Europe and call them cloth. Second, this does not replace rags or paper towels for spills. Imagine the cat tips over a fishy bowl of food. You reach for one of these hard little rectangles. It was not evident to me until after purchase that these cannot be used as is, like a dishcloth would be. You have to go to the sink and wet it, then wring it out, while the spill is dribbling from the counter to the floor, then the best you can achieve is to push the mess around a bit. The rectangle isnt big enough to scoop up anything and isnt absorbent enough to clear away the mess. Dont get me wrong, I am big on saving paper. I use dishcloths (REAL ones) for absorbing clean water, like drying dishes. I have a separate one for drying hands while cooking. I have a two-stage sponge plan for messes, one to get the majority of the mess and the second to clean up after the first. I do have paper towels and use those multiple times. If they are merely wet, say from cleaning a mirror, I let them dry and use them again for progressively dirty jobs, until they are thrown away. If something is spreading across the counter and dribbling and needs to be picked up quickly, good luck using one of these Swedish dishcloths. This brings me to a gripe about squandering the equity in the reputation of Sweden and, in particular, Swedish dishcloths. I happen to have studied Swedish looms and weaving. Swedish housewives were known to produce heirloom quality woven household items for their trousseau. To me the words Swedish in the name of the product and dishcloth are akin to Swiss watch. The best. So, these are not dishcloths and surely not Swedish dishcloths. The instructions say to wash these in the dishwasher or washing machine. Can you imagine that a dishwasher will really clean a stinky mess out of a sponge (which is what these really are, next point)? More likely, it will absorb oily and smelly substances from the dishes and spread them around the next time you use one of these to try to clean up. About sponges, that is what this is, exactly. You can get these in the grocery store for a tiny fraction of the rip-off cost of these. They are also made of wood pulp but do not have the pretentious and oh-so-precious claims of the pure Swedish woods aka tree farms. I was stupid, really stupid. I saw CNN touting these for a couple of months and finally decided to investigate them. They made it sound like anyone stupid enough to buy paper towels was destroying the environment instead of being really enlightened and, um, Scandinavian ... blue eyes, blonde hair, pure Aryans, definitely no Asians, whom we have characterized racially as enemies and whom bigots suggest when they boast that something is made in America. With such an unbelievably high price, I assumed they must be worth it, so I took the bait, not realizing Id be getting something identical to the flat sponges I got from the grocery store and rarely use. I really hate the misleading hype, so am suspicious about everything written on the package. A card with a font made to look like handwriting thanked me for supporting a small family business. Am I supposed to picture these blonde, blue-eyed, pure-at-heart Swedes making dishcloths in the family room by the fireside? Okay, a factory that is family owned. A lot of big businesses are small family owned. Small is the adjective modifying family, not business. Nothing like the small family businesses youd find on Etsy, for example, the unemployed husband in the basement crafting clothes hooks out of tree branches, the wife upstairs handling business accounts and correspondence from the kitchen table, the home-schooled children handling the packing and shipping. I happen to have wonderful dishcloths that I love using, some great sponges, rags like old T-shirts, and, yes, paper towels that I ration out only when absolutely prudent. What I dont have is this package of outrageously overpriced little cardboard sponges. Returned.

My daughter introduced me to a similar product. Those had cute designs and were way more expensive and didn’t last long. I wanted to try a different brand and turned to Amazon. I found these and decided to give them a try. The comparison….these from Amazon and this seller are bigger, much more absorbent and made from sustainable forests. They are packed by local (Swedes) with disabilities. I used a paper hole puncher to punch a corner and place them on the cabinet door when not in use. We use them in our kitchen and bathrooms in addition to using them to clean our dogs faces. I highly recommend these and will use this brand here on out.

So far so good. Waiting to see how long it will last. We had cloth rags same size and they just smelled mildewy and nasty but this is completely odor free and wipes counters beautifully. A sponge will never work as well as this. Well see in 2 months. Going to try washing it in the dishwasher as another customer suggested.

I love these cloths in general, super absorbent, easy to clean. These however were so stinky when they arrived, I’m so glad I didn’t send them to anyone as a gift. They went straight into the dishwasher to get rid of the smell. I probably would not order from the same people again based on that alone but the product itself works fine.