Dropping Weight From Your Dental Kit – Ideas Shared

I don't use tooth powder or paste when backpacking. My dentist assured me that it wasn't an necessary part of dental hygiene…..especially for only a few days.

Daryl

Understood…I realize this, but sometimes it's the little things that can bring you happiness on the trail. While I have no problem getting stinky and dirty on the trail, it sure feels outstanding when you can get cleaned up occasionally. Especially on long trips. And at 0.7oz for the whole kit…not bad if you ask me. I think it drops to 0.5oz without the Q-Tips. The tooth powder comes in at 0.1-0.2oz in the little bottle.

HTH

KJ

Ken,

Thanks for your ideas. I've gone to a mini-brush:

and I prefer the floss-in-a-holder rather than loose floss:

But there is a certain luxury to having a full-handled tooth brush. And it keeps your fingers out of your mouth. Your two-part handle gave me an idea. Use the front half of a regular toothbrush, and the front half of a full-handled flosser. Carve your joint into each. Together, you'd get a long handle for both tasks.

Maybe this belongs under philosophy, but the biggest boost to my dental hygiene comes from flossing and brushing on the trail. At the sink at home or in a campsite, I'm often rushing around and finish in 20 seconds what I should take 2 minutes to do. But if I floss and brush while driving or hiking, I take my time with it, do it much longer and more thoroughly, and pat myself on the back for efficiently multi-tasking. A bigger factor on death marches (30-40-50 miles in a day) is to eat and drink while hiking, but every little bit helps.

I like long handles on my floss and tooth brush. Easier to do a better job and very important: keep your fingers out of your mouth… Very hard to have good hygiene on the trail even without my fingers in my mouth. Dirty fingers can have fecal matter or even giardia cysts… very hard to clean up the fingers (and under the finger nails) out there in the wild. I'd rather carry the few grams extra than get sick.

B

My dental kit is at 2.5oz… unfortunately, being an old geezer, I need to take some additional tools: interdental brush, tuft brush, etc.

My list:
full handled tooth brush
small container of baking soda
floss and container (need the cutter on the container)
long handled floss holder
tuft brush (for getting behind the back teeth)
interdental brush and holder
extra interdental brushes as they break
bag: Sea to Summit light weight mesh bag so things will dry out…

Bill

Bill, you make a very good point about keeping fingers out of the mouth while brushing. That occurred to me recently, too. I have a tiny brush and I'm considering getting one with a longer handle.

I found some cheap and light products on minimus.biz that have worked well for me. Like the 4" toothbrush for 12-cents each (http://www.minimus.biz/Generic-High-Visibility-Orange-30-Tuft-Toothbrush-4-C01-0459907-1000.aspx) and individual toothpaste in foil for overnights.

When I was in Japan last year, every hotel I stayed in provided these amazingly light toothbrush (with a very long handle) and teeny tubes of toothpaste. Good stuff! I diligently pocketed them every night… came home with a dozen of them! :)