12 great reasons to always have dental floss on hand

You can do much more with dental floss than just clean your teeth

We’re guessing you probably have some dental floss lying around somewhere in your bathroom. If you don’t use it every day, then you might have bought it because your dentist told you to, only to abandon the endeavour after a few days. We agree with your dentist that it’s important to floss every day, but you can use the small white thread for much more than just your teeth!

You can use it to clean with, for example.

1. Dripping faucet

A dripping faucet is super annoying and it also wastes a lot of water. It needs to be fixed as soon as possible, of course, but if it’s already late at night, you won’t be able to do it right away. To not go completely crazy from the sound of dripping water, you can tie a piece of floss around the faucet. Make sure the end of the floss hangs in the drain. This way, you’re guiding the drops of water to the drain via the piece of floss and you eliminate the dripping.

2. Keyboard

You can floss your teeth, but you can also floss the keyboard of your computer! Wind the dental floss around your fingers and floss the dirt from underneath and in between the keys of the keyboard.

3. Stickiness

Want to remove a photograph from paper without ripping it? Use a bit of floss! Carefully move the floss to and fro in between the photograph and the paper to loosen it.

4. Glasses

Do you wear glasses but has one of the tiny screws gone missing, making your glasses very wobbly? Thread a small piece of floss through the hole of the screw and make a knot. This way, your glasses will stay put until you can have the tiny screw replaced.

5. Cake

Do you love to bake? When baking a layer cake, you usually bake the cake in one go and then slice it into the different layers afterwards. It’s smart to do this with a piece of string or floss. Stick toothpicks or cocktail sticks into the sides of the cake, using a ruler to make sure they’re all at the same height. Wrap a piece of floss around the cake, just above the toothpicks and then carefully pull in a slow motion, so the cake gets sliced. Tip: don’t use floss with an added flavour (like menthol) for this trick.

6. Cookies

Have you baked cookies? Then you’ll want to make sure they cool quickly so you can eat them as soon as possible. Unfortunately, cookies that are still warm are often still a bit sticky on the bottom, which means they stick to the greaseproof paper. Not to worry, though, because you can just ‘floss’ them off. Remove the cookies from the paper by carefully sliding a piece of floss underneath them and pulling it towards you.

7. Popcorn string

This is a fun little DIY project to do with the kids: thread a piece of floss through a needle and string popcorn onto this. You can hang this popcorn ‘ornament’ in your Christmas tree, for example. You can also string macaroni or other pasta onto some floss to create funny necklaces.

8. Hair tie

Has your last hair tie given up and snapped just when you really wanted to put your hair up in a ponytail? If you really need to get your hair out of your face you can use a piece of dental floss instead! Because of the layer of wax, the floss is nice and sturdy. This works especially well for people with thin hair, but you might need some extra floss if you have thick hair.

9. Shoelace

Got a broken shoelace? Use a piece of floss as a replacement until you can get some new laces.

10. Torch

Wrap a piece of floss around some sticks and then light it on fire. You’ve got yourself an easy torch!

11. Rope

When you cut off a piece of rope, the end often starts to fray like crazy. To prevent this from happening, you can tie a piece of floss around it.

12. Meat

Use flavourless floss to tie meat together before putting it in the oven if you don’t have any twine at your disposal.

Source: Tiphero | Image: Pixabay