Only if the cloth wasn't well rinsed after use, or able to dry quickly.

Do you mean after one use as in by the time its wet and used once... or after it's been used once and hung up to dry it smells? How are you hanging the cloth to dry after use?

It's from bacteria that never washed out. I am trying the Febreze spray that is supposed to remove odors. Can't say it's a miracle. I also have found rinsing in vinegar helps.

Try getting the cloth soaking wet and then microwave for 30 seconds. Then rewash. I used to occasionally get that sour smell in dishcloths. Microwaving them (only when wet, never dry due to fire risk) and a rewash fixes it.

I don't use dishcloths, I use cellulose sponges with a scrubby side. They don't seem to get smelly unless hubby's been using them, since he can't - or won't - remember to wring them out - or rinse them 🫤

I always scour my dishpan/sink with Comet cleanser before doing the dishes, so the bleach helps sanitize the sponges, I guess.

I also scrape and rinse dishes before washing up, so the water doesn't get too dirty.

I use this for dishes, and I don't skimp on it either - I like my dishwater very soapy.

Maybe you just need to change your dishcloths daily...?

I haven't seen Sunlight detergent in years and consider it a low-end product. Run a load of dish cloths with chlorine bleach added, or borax.

I was introduced to a brand called Norwex. They are antimicrobial. I picked up a stack at a thrift store for use on the boat. Sometimes laundry is a long way off, and smelly dish towels are a problem. These truly do not get smelly. They're not cheap, but I think they will last a good while.

I can be a type A stickler about things like dish washing tools, cloths, sponges, brushes. You might not want to be me roommate.

I use all cotton white 12 inch square budget utility “wash cloths.” I have a dishwasher, but wash dishes by hand sometimes. When I am cleaning up or cooking, I have a fresh white cloth and a container (clean yogurt or 16 oz deli container) filled with dish detergent an a bit of chlorine bleach. Be use SDS, not city so I am mindful of not puting much bleach into the septic system.

I rinse dishes,, then wash with the detergent, pile up some, then rinse and put the dishes on a drain rack. If I have a messy pot, I wipe any grease or debris out with qa paper towel. No grease goes down the drain. I wash the first layer of whaeer off with tap water, scrub brush on stick (and I don’t let crumbs, grease or debris gunk up my brush on a stick. Pot get empties out, them washed with detergent and scrub brush. Sometimes I use those Scotch Brite yellow sponges with the green scrub side. I keep that clean and crud free as well (easy, I’m mindful). When the pot or large cooking bowl is clean, it gets rinsed and put to drain and dry.

If DH cruds up a scrub brush, or scothbrite combo sponge, I remind him. If junky looking, I toss it. I don’t use the white terrycloth on messy plate, pots, pans withpout first pre-washing them.

All clean. I wash out, rinse out the white terry cloth (like a small bar cloth. I really wring it out. It is clean from the detergent-bleach solution and not getting big gunky food or grease all over it. I let it dry so that the air with get to it, or a sunny hook or a wood stove stainless steel drying rod. Easy. No stink, bacteria laden dish cloth terry cloths.

DH is not as meticulous, so I sometimes have to give him a refresher class.

Before I put these cloths in the washer, they are pretty clean. And, I never let damp soil laundry pile up. That is verboten as it will become a petri dish for bacteria.

There are two types of thpose yellow/green scubby spong with the uniform, small holes (?cellulose?) doesn’t wring out well, is messy. PITA.

When the utility white terry cloths look crumby, the get used for rougher work and I buy a another twenty of the 12x12 inch cotton utility ”face cloths.”

If DH leaves a soggy, un-wrung out and grubby cloth by the kitchen sink, I employ remediation strategy 3X.

PS I hate helping with dishes at anyone’s house thyat has mungy dish cloths or no clean sink. That’s just me. When I was a teen babysitter, I had to clean up people’s sinks that gave me the willies. And I go full willies when someone has food bits like onion pieces float arounf in the soapy dish washer.

What I did when I had the same problem: All of the dishcloths into a bucket of very hot water with a bit of chlorine bleach. Soak a few minutes then launder & dry. Kills the stink causing bacteria that doesn't wash out with just laundry soap & hot water.

I think that dish soap matters, too. I like Palmolive with Oxy liquid. Always wring out the dish cloth after every use and hang over the faucet. If you leave a sopping dishrag laying in the bottom of the sink, you will have the problem all over again.

I have a big supply of cotton dish cloths and some days I go through several. I wash them, white towels and kitchen towels, along with white sheets in a load using hot water and a small amount of sanitizing chlorine bleach. Mine never smell if I do this. If they get smelly after one use they are not getting clean and bacteria is growing on them. I only have to use a tablespoon or two in my front load HE washer.

Not sure what a 'dish cloth' is. Do you actually use it to wash dishes with? Or is it just for wiping surfaces? If the former I'd say it's single use and then wash hot. I use a brush and scouring pad, never a cloth because you can't rinse out food residues. For surfaces I use a cloth and change it every couple of days as guided by my nose.

I'm telling you folks, just nuke the darn things. 30 seconds and all bacteria and anything else is dead. Problem solved. 😁

IIRC, I have had that happen with a dishcloth, and bleaching and washing and all kinds of things didn't seem to help. It would start to smell again when it got wet. I threw it out.

I use all cotton dishcloths and I do all of the washing up in the sink. I dont have a dishwasher and, if I did, I dont have enough dishes in my cabinet to even fill it up.

I have had this problem with some dishcloths and it was puzzling why. I always hang the wet ones out over the rail of the deck in the hot summer sun or in a place in the garage in the winter, so they dont sit all wet and germy before they get washed. But I was having this odd smell on them that seemed to defy hot water, detergent and a bit of bleach.

I noticed that the ones that the worst offenders were ones that were not all cotton and they had that scrubby stuff on one side. And, these were not ones thay may have had something embedded in the scrubby mesh, such as dough, for instance. To the eye they were not harboring bits of stuff.

I did two things...got rid of those for all cotton and I also changed from Palmolive to Dawn and have .never had that happen since. It seems logical to assume that one of those things was the cause of the odor., but I dont know which one. The smell was evern there after a trip through some boiling water, so I knew my cloths were clean, but that smell would not go away. And anything that the cloths came into contact with would smell, even my hands It was odd that it was so pervasive. And it was an odd smell, too. I dont think that I would have identified it as a bacteria smell in a blind smell test. It has a strange sour or acidic odor, but not quite like bacteria,

When I saw this post, I identified with her experience.

All cotton cheap cloths from Walmart and Dawn and I have not that happen since. Logic points to one, or both, of those changes to have solved the problem. If asked to choose one factor, I would point the finger at the fragrance in the Palmolive. The smell that was in my cloths was not exactly what I know of as a bacteria smell. It smelled to me a bit more like an old stale perfumy smell, gone bad rather than bacteria. Some of those perfume chemicals that get added to so many products are really pervasive and get embedded in the fibers. If bleach and boiling water dont do it, look to the perfume in the product.

I used to buy Palmolive but switched to Dawn. after using Palmolive for years. I always buy the one that has zero fragrance, if I can. But, even that, I have read , is not really free of perfumes as we think it would be .

After demoting those scrubby sided cloths to the rag bag, the smell still remains in them when I pick up one up to use to clean up various household messes. I am really thinking that it was the perfume in the detergent., like old stale perfume gone acidic. Just possible that those clothe just harbored the smell more than the all cotton. Just my speculation and experience.

The sour smell is bacteria. Bacteria can be hard to kill - as in, VERY hard to kill. Bacteria do not survive being microwaved though. Problem solved. :-)

(FOAS, we'd get along just fine. I microwave my sponges too....)

Part of the problem is that the cotton now is not the cotton of my youth. I don't know what is different, but it is. I used to wash, bleach, and scrub with my cloths and they were fine. They lasted forever and when just ratty enough they were not dishcloths, they moved to cleaning cloths and served for quite a bit longer. Now, you can't even bleach most.

(I use the microwave also, Aly.)

Thanks for all of the suggestions!

There is no food scraps or grease on my dishes prior to washing them.

My cloth is always hanging on the stove handle to dry. I use all-cotton dishcloths....buy a bundle of them at Costco.

Petalique, I use the white bar cloths type cloths as wash cloths, etc. I love them.

I loathe the smell of Dawn, can't handle it at all. I bought a bottle to mix with vinegar I think it was, to scrub the tub. I had the door closed and the window open all day. I still have that bottle under the sink. I think it kills weeds too.

I'll be microwaving and soaking my dish cloths when they start to stink. I have 1/2 dozen in my drawer that I use all the time, no room for more; and a couple of packs of brand new ones.

Dawn gives me eczema. I don’t use fragrance.

I used to microwave, but found above post idea better.

Food particles can be trapped in cloths, sponges, scrubbies or scrub brushes.

Any organic material trapped in the fabric or scrubber you clean with — ”cooked” or even ”microwaved” will still be in the cleaning tool.

Gross example: morselize some cooked chicken, embed it into a cloth, spong or scrubby. Microwave all you care to. If you get food bits or dead chicken, horse or noodle embedded in your cleaning tool, cloth it will still be there and will begin to resume decomposing and smelling. Coiled scrub pads, the sponge scrubby things can get caked with organic debris (food bit, flour, etc.. It is best and freshest to avoid this. So I rinse food off before washing. Super easy.

Flour on a pastry board? Remove it and use a bench pastry scraper for stuck pastry dough.

Works for me.

I always scour my dishpan/sink with Comet cleanser before doing the dishes, so the bleach helps sanitize the sponges, I guess.

Are you saying you use the same sponge to clean the sink AND wash dishes?

Thorough drying is the key -- whether it's dish cloths or towels.

Sponges give me the heebie jeebies. Dh keeps one under the sink for scrubbing pots, but it's not used on dishes. It's also replaced on a regular basis.

The raw meat cutting board is washed with a paper towel, not the dish cloth or sponge.

A post above brought to mind the battles that I have had with getting fragrance out of synthetic fabrics (donated to give to the teen homeless shelter). I can imagine that any cloth that is not all natural material can retain odors, just like the clothing, no matter if bleached or otherwise treated.

But in the all-cotton cloths - that has me stumped - it isn't something I've experienced. Could there be something in the water, perhaps? Maybe a chemical interacting with detergent residue? We do have issues with the city water having peculiar odors from time to time.

FWIW, my cellulose sponges never get smelly, or slimy, or in any way funky. They seem to dry out very quickly. I don't use them to wipe up meat or egg messes - just paper towel.

OTOH, I can't stand nylon/plastic foam sponges.

This is what I use - and I change them out frequently. I also sanitize them every so often by saturating with isopropyl alcohol or peroxide.

Cotton fibers are cellulose, BTW.

P.S. I think I know what's meant by a strange cloying perfume/stench that seems to come from some dish detergents. I've noticed that too. It smells like a mixture of stale food/grease + dryer sheets.

I am pretty throughly in the camp of the smell being from some chemical in the detergent, rather than being bacteria. I know that my cloths were subjected to boiling water and/or bleach as well as normal washing, and the smell persisted. I change them out everyday and I hang them to dry as they wait for the wash.

If you have ever bought fabric items from the Goodwill you will have noticed that what ever they treat those clothes with has a pervasive odor. I often have to wash things up to four times to get the smell out. My point is that these different chemicals that get used in the production of these things that we use to clean and in our washing prouducts , I think, can linger in teh most unpleasant manner.

I know that I treated my problem cloths in a manner that would have effectively eliminated any bacteria that would have produced such a smell and it still persisted. It even lingered on my hands after I had tried to use the cloths, without any additional use of the product. My cloths may not have been sterile enough for surgery, but they were certainly as clean as they could possibly by all normal standards and the smell persisted.

i really dont think that it was bacteria. It was very unpleasant, though, and I liken it more to a sour franken fragrance . I am no stranger to what bacteria smells like. I have been at this business of keeping house and home for a very long time and have done battle with micro life. I used to cloth diaper my babies, for one and I know what a decayed tooth smells like or that bit of chicken juice that maybe got dripped here or there unnoticed, or an compost pile gone anaerobic. Although bacteria is the most likely thing to point the finger at, I am not convinced that it is what I was dealing wiht, although it was really stinky and that would have been the first assumption, but I am not convinced that it was actually so.

I have the same experience with having to launder multiple times to get fragrances out of fabric. My sister loves scented everything, including perfumes, and also likes to share clothes with me. Some of those things retain their smell through multiple launderings. Really makes me wonder what is being used that's so pervasive and lingering?

Those look like good sponges, carolb. Brand?

I used to sometimes get migraines (?) when shopping in department stores like Filene’s — I wasn’t sure if it was any one thing, Sizing, fragrance?

For any meat preparation, I use a board that can be washed, have hot water and bleachy suds put on it, then washed in the dishwasher.

I just bought a new supply of white cotton cloths— 18 for less than $7. I will wash and dry then before using.

Scotchbrite makes them, and I usually buy the Great Value version from Walmart. Aldi sells a version as well, but theirs have come apart after just a couple of uses.

Jasdip — you could hold a weekend retreat! First dinner and best fancy restaurants in Montreal or Quebec.

Ever read about the super noses that work for research houses such as Arthur D. Little?

I think NPR once had a program about them and some of the digusting things they had to sniff.

I'd been buying the WM version of the blue scrubbie-sponges. They don't last long and I'm not a heavy user. Bought a package of the Scotch-brite, much better durability.

Costco sells the Scotch-Brite.

https://www.costco.com/scotch-brite-zero-scratch-sponge%2c-24-count.product.4000141369.html