Surprising Alternative Uses for Your Dental Supplies

Lilly Family Dentistry Blog

You may be surprised to learn that your dental products can do much more than keep your mouth healthy, some of them may surprise you.

Dental Floss


  • Twine – Use dental floss to hang ornaments, photos, sew difficult buttons onto clothing or even to tie small packages.
  • Fishing line – You guessed it, dental floss is a handy solution for broken fishing line.
  • Quieting a leaky faucet – Tying dental floss around a leaking faucet with a side hanging down into the sink will help curb the annoying “drip” as water will slide down the floss into the sink.
  • Ring removal – If you ever have a ring stuck on your finger, you might want to try wrapping some dental floss around the base to help slide the stuck jewelry off more easily than using soap and water.
  • Shoelaces – Repairing a shoelace in an emergency situation.
  • Supporting Climbing Plants – Many common garden plants – like cucumbers or tomatoes or roses – often need the help of scaffolding to allow them to grow. You can create a simple trellis by tying floss in a ladder pattern. Removing Photos – Old photos are prone to adhering themselves to the album pages. To remove them without risking damage, simply slide a piece of floss between the picture and the page. It should separate with ease. Slicing Cake – If you’re ever caught out – say on a picnic or at the beach – and find yourself needing to slice through cake or other soft food, but you’re lacking in the knife department . . . just rummage around in your bag until you come up with some dental floss! Hold it taught and use it to slice – it works wonders and the food doesn’t stick like it does to a knife!

Toothpaste


  • Cleaning – You can use toothpaste to clean a whole host of things, including cook tops, shoes, irons, jewelry, fingernails and toenails.
  • Spot fixes – Toothpaste is a great product to use when patching nail holes or to fill cracks in CDs or DVDs.
  • Topical uses – It has been said that spot applying toothpaste can help reduce the appearance of blemishes, relieve discomfort of cold sores, soothe itching bug bites and ease the pain of a bee sting.
  • Deodorizer – Toothpaste can help clean baby bottles and drains as well as destroying their tough odors.
  • Removing Stains – Toothpaste can make tough stains on both clothing and carpets disappear. For clothes, apply toothpaste directly to the stain and rub briskly until the spot is gone, then wash as usual. (Note that using a whitening toothpaste on colors can sometimes bleach the fabric.) For carpet stains, apply toothpaste to the stain and scrub it with an abrasive brush, then rinse immediately.
  • De-fog goggles – Scuba divers, swimmers, and triathletes may already know about this handy little trick: Rub a small spot of toothpaste into each lens of your goggles, then rinse thoroughly, and voila! There’ll be no need to ever buy expensive defogger gels again. Avoid rubbing too vigorously, though, as the abrasive ingredients in toothpaste could scratch the lenses.

Toothbrush (USE OLD ONES!!)


  • Cleaning – Maybe not so surprising, but a toothbrush is a great tool for cleaning hard to reach areas or working at tough scuffs and stains, like crayon marks, tile flooring or the rubber soles of shoes
  • Beauty – Use a (clean) toothbrush to tame unruly eyebrows, scrub under fingernails, clean mascara brushes, apply hair dye and exfoliate your lips.
  • At work, or home- Ever get tired of the dust in your keyboard? A dry toothbrush is a great tool to get your keyboard clean again!
  • Appliances – Toothbrushes are a great tool to clean those hard to reach places on appliances like toasters and coffee machines! –Just make sure they are off and unplugged first!

Do you have any interesting uses for your dental products? Share them with us facebook!!