A vacation planner shares her cheap and quick DIY travel hack for visiting Disney World: sponges filled with soap

• A travel planner has shared the DIY cleaning item she brings to Disney World: soap-covered sponges.
• In a TikTok video, she said the cleaning tool allows her to wash reusable items like water bottles.

If you have a Disney vacation planned in the near future, you might want to consider packing cleaning supplies — specifically, soap-covered sponges.

Michelle Johnson, a travel planner at The Magic Travel Company specializing in Disney vacations, recently shared on TikTok that she always brings inexpensive sponges covered in dried, liquid soap on trips so she can wash water bottles, lunch boxes, and other reusable items in her hotel room.

Her video, which she posted on September 1, has been viewed more than 2.5 million times as of Friday.

Johnson says she buys sponges from the dollar store, covers them in dish soap, and then lets them dry for a few hours. Later, she chops the sponges into small squares and stores them in Ziploc bags, making the sponges easy to transport in her luggage.

"This just ensures that I'm not having to go to the store to buy anything extra like sponges and soap to wash things in our room," she said in her video.

In a message sent to Insider, Johnson said she also brings them with her on the go. "I like to take a few into the parks for easy wipe down of quick service tables, our stroller, or just to wash my girls' hands after a Mickey ice-cream bar," she said.

The Disney fan noted that her DIY sponges are also great for other vacations, like Disney cruises.

To use them, she said, you simply run each piece under water, allowing the sponges to soften and the soap to sud. Then you can use them to wash your belongings and discard of them when you're finished.

Johnson — who specializes in planning Disney vacations, according to her social-media pages — frequently shares her travel hacks and preparation ideas online.

In another TikTok video posted on September 2, she shared that she also packs "laundry bags," or larger Ziploc backs containing a single Tide Pod.

"When I'm in the parks, if there's an emergency — which always happens with toddlers — all I do is throw in some water, add the shirt or the item that is all stained or needs to be washed," she said in her TikTok video. "I shake it up, break the pod, and I did my laundry really quick."

And when her family returns to their hotel, she said, all she needs to do is rinse off the garment and hang it to dry.