5 Tips to Help You Remember to Floss

Flossing is extremely important when it comes to your overall dental health. Flossing helps remove plaque from between your teeth where it is hard to reach with your toothbrush. The American Dental Association recommends flossing at least once a day. Dr. Rogers is a dentist in Spanish Fork Utah who feels very strongly about his patients flossing everyday. Let’s face it though; we aren’t always the best at flossing everyday. We thought it would be helpful to come up with a list of creative tips to help all of us remember to floss.

1. We are a lot less likely to skip brushing our teeth. Our first tip is to tie some floss around your toothbrush. You will see it every time you brush and it will be an immediate reminder. You can do the same with your mouthwash bottle as well as a tongue brush if you use one. Seeing the floss on your toothbrush, mouthwash and tongue brush will be a great reminder to take the extra 1-2 minutes to floss and remove the plaque build up.

2. Set a daily reminder on your phone. There is probably nothing more inseparable from us than our phones. You always have your phone with you so why not use it to help you remember to floss everyday? Set a reminder alert on your calendar app or set a daily alarm at around the time you usually brush your teeth at night. Most of us have different brushing times on the weekend vs the week day so set your alarm times accordingly and before long this alarm may help you form a lifelong habit of daily flossing.

3. Post reminders. The best place would be on your mirror but you may find that your tired and dreary eyes ignore that area of the mirror, as they just want to shut and go to sleep. This may be a little bit gross, but if you’re really struggling with your flossing you might want to tape a picture of a mouth with major tooth decay as motivation. That might get those eyes to open wide for another few minutes.

4. Floss in the shower or bath. Who said you had to floss at night, right before bed? Not this Spanish Fork dentist! If you are struggling to floss on a daily basis, try combining it with your daily shower or bath. Just keep the floss somewhere where you’ll see it and pretty soon it will become a new part of our showering or bathing routine.

5. Track your flossing and reward yourself. Set a goal to floss one week straight and then find something fun to reward your self with. Then up the goal to 30 straight days with a bigger reward. Our guess is that once you get to 30 straight days, the habit will be strongly formed and you’ll never look back.

We hope these tips help you improve your flossing habits. We have seen far too many patients who haven’t been flossing and end up paying for it with tartar buildup and cavities. Make it a daily habit.