Kitchenally-Challenged.

Have you met Sponge-Char Burned-Pants? I have. Last Wednesday. He lives in the microwave.

Mr. Pants made his appearance when I was sanitizing my dish sponge in the microwave (1 min on high=sanitary sponge). As usual, I popped the sponge into the microwave while I made my lunch for the next day. It is a lovely routine. I end up with a clean sponge to do my dishes and a tuna sandwich.

After my sandwich was done, I was puttering around, putting other groceries away, pre-treating my laundry, and thinking about crawling into bed with my new book (the only thing I'm crawling into bed with lately), when all of a sudden I smelled something burning.

I thought, "Oh my god! The sponge!"

I ran back upstairs to get the sponge out of the microwave. I arrived just in time to see my sponge burst into flames. I hit the cancel button and stepped back. The flames went out, but there was smoke everywhere!

I thought about opening the microwave to throw the sponge in the sink, but I was afraid of backdraft-like consequences in which I would open the door and the smoldering sponge would burst back into flames, thus scarring me for life! So I did what every wary kitchen-fire victim would do. I grabbed the broom.

Broom in hand, I was getting ready to open the microwave door from afar, when the doorbell rang. I opened the door, and my nice neighbor, Lisa, was standing there asking if I was okay! Awwwwww! She had smelled the smoke in the hallway and wanted to make sure everyone was okay inside. Oddly, our smoke detector didn't go off during this whole smoky fiasco. Never mind that it gets set off practically every time someone fries an egg (like every day).

With everything explained to Lisa, I headed back inside, broom still in hand, ready to open the microwave. I poked the button to open the door and nothing happened. No backdraft. It was very anti-climatic.

The good news is, the microwave still works. The bad news is that I spent an hour scraping Sponge-Char Burned-Pants and smoke residue off every surface in the microwave.

I re-heated some leftovers in the microwave tonight, and the ghost of Mr. Pants came out to visit. Nothing like the smell of charred cellulose!

Moral: When sanitizing your kitchen sponge, make sure the microwave is set for 1 minute. Not 10. Cellulose ignites at roughly 9 mins 24 seconds.