Kitchen Chat: All dish soaps and sponges are NOT created equal!!!

So normally I use good old classic Dawn dish soap.  We don't have a dishwasher so everything is done by hand (bummer for me).  Sponges I use Ocello (I think?) they are blue and kinda curvy.  Anywho recently I decided to try the dawn soap that has the oil of olay right in it.  Bought a whole huge bottle of it thinking it would help my hands not be so dried out.  Ha.  Didn't really make a difference at all, just a reason for them to charge you more!  I also tried the Gain dish soap when it first came out, mostly cause I had a coupon and figured I would give it a shot.  While the smell was different from Dawn (in a good way) and it was cheaper (even without a coupon) it seemed more watery.  I had to use way more of the soap to get the same amount of dishes clean compared to with the dawn.  As for sponges there has been times when for whatever reason I had to get the super-cheap ones and there is most definitely a difference!!!  They don't scrub as well and they don't last as long.  As it is with the amount of dishes we do we go through a sponge maybe every week or so, which seems like a lot to me.  We also have a scrub brush on a stick, mostly for those damn sippy cups I can't seem to throw away (not that my kids can't drink out of a regular cup but they have a tendency to spill a lot and sippies save me a lot of cleanup).