Why People Are Keeping A Toothbrush In Their Kitchen

Toothbrushes are an essential item to maintain dental hygiene. Regardless of if you use an electric toothbrush or are a manual toothbrush user, it's highly advised by the American Dental Association to change your toothbrush or your toothbrush head every three to four months — sometimes sooner if the bristles are worn down or flattened. Keeping this advice in mind, the average person will go through three or four toothbrushes every year, which can add up to quite a bit of discarded plastic within a lifetime. Instead of immediately adding to the already overflowing landfills, there are many brilliant ways to repurpose and use a toothbrush around the house to clean things other than your teeth. 

While an electric toothbrush is an essential item when cleaning your bathroom, manual toothbrush users can relocate and repurpose their old brushes in the kitchen. The bristles and narrow shape of toothbrushes make them wonderful cleaning tools for hard to reach spots on or around kitchen appliances. Soft-bristled brushes can be used to clean various dishware or utensils that are difficult to thoroughly scrub with an ordinary sponge. Read on to see what else you can effectively use a toothbrush for within your kitchen.

When simply rinsing vegetables and other produce just doesn't seem to cut it, using a toothbrush can help effectively clean dirt-riddled fruits and veggies. Clean mushrooms, cleanse the insides of bok choy stems, or scrub down other fresh ingredients like potatoes, squash, pumpkins — anything with a crevice or textured exterior — more thoroughly than just running water on top and over it. Produce cleaning brushes are already a common product, but the gentle bristles of a toothbrush can take away any excess dirt off of even the most delicate of produce without damaging it.

Whether you use a traditional coffee brewer with a coffee pot and filters or a fancier coffee maker, it's important to keep all the various parts of your appliance clean so you can always enjoy a truly fresh cup of joe in the morning. Having a toothbrush on hand and ready to go beside your espresso bar can guarantee your coffee maker is clean and ready to brew. Scrub away any excess coffee grounds or water build up from the filter holder, the water head, and other parts that a regular sponge just can't reach.

It's not typically a smart idea to stick your hand in the toaster, regardless of if it's plugged or unplugged. Sponges and washcloths can be too big and can get too damp to clean a slice toaster without damaging some sort of delicate electrical component within it. Instead, clean out crumblies from every nook and cranny of your appliance with a toothbrush. Whether you have a slice toaster or a toaster oven, old teeth scrubbers can be converted into tools to keep your toaster tidy.

With so much contact and traffic, kitchen sink faucets can become grody over time. Sponges can do a decent job at getting them clean, but using a toothbrush to clean and remove buildup from your kitchen sink's faucet can really make it shine. Paired with a vinegar soak, you can say goodbye to excess water buildup and debris that may have accumulated on your water tap. A toothbrush can also be used to polish your sink stopper and strainer, scrubbing away any food remnants caught in its grasp.

For dental hygiene and cleanliness, toothbrushes are used in conjunction with toothpaste to make your teeth sparkle. In the kitchen, they can also be repurposed and used together with stovetop cleaners to buff and brighten your burners. The bristles on toothbrushes can really work through stubborn grease and oil stains that may have splattered and stained your stovetop. The smaller scrubber and handle on the brush can make it easier to grip and target buildup on burners and grates, particularly on a gas stovetop.

Kitchenware with holes or small blades can be tricky to clean with sponges and washcloths. The moment a sponge or washcloth gets caught within the grates, your grated cheese might get contaminated with sponge and cloth particles. This is where a toothbrush can come in handy. Using a mouth brush to scrub your cheese graters and strainers can get your kitchen tools extra clean without worrying about grating a sponge. The soft bristles on a toothbrush can also effectively reach hard to clean areas on vegetable peelers, too.

Ever struggle to clean jars or cans that have openings narrower than your hand? Enter: a slim and narrow toothbrush. The narrow body of a toothbrush can adequately fit through the opening of any container, making it possible to scrub and clean. Apply dish soap in lieu of toothpaste on the bristles and scrub away at the inside of any can or jar without risking your hand getting stuck.

In addition to being great for cleaning the container itself, a toothbrush can also be handy to scrub the lids and neck of containers, especially those with ridges or screw-on lids. What sponges can sometimes miss, a toothbrush can pick up. Whether you're cleaning the ridged lips of bottles and jars or trying to sufficiently clean the narrower parts of Tupperware lids, a toothbrush can easily scrub away any food debris trapped within them.

Looking at colanders, potato mashers, skimmers, draining spoons, peelers, slotted spoons — how is it possible to thoroughly clean any kitchen utensil with holes in it? It's a little difficult to adequately scrub out those small holes with a sponge, but with a toothbrush, cleaning your holed kitchen tools can be a breeze. Use the brush's smaller head and bristles to deep clean within the gaps and holes, making sure you eliminate any food remnant caught inside the hard to reach spots.

The deeper parts of ridges within other kitchen utensils can be hard to rigorously clean. To polish your teeth and reduce buildup, a toothbrush is used for scrubbing at the gaps between teeth. In a similar vein, a toothbrush can be used to clean these kitchen tools that have deeper ridges that make it possible to crack open crabs and nuts. Similarly, garlic presses, with their many holes, can be cleaned easily with the soft bristles of a toothbrush.

Itty bitty forks, appetizer forks, and main course forks can be hard to scrub clean after being used for a full course dinner spread. The slim gaps between the tines make it hard to scrub away any remnant food stuck between them. Armed with a toothbrush, however, cleaning forks can be a cinch. Simply brush through the tines as you would your teeth, eliminating any food particles, effectively cleansing your forks prior to another use.

While cleaning the inside of your refrigerator and freezer is a must, homeowners tend to forget to clean the outside of the appliances as well. If you have a fridge-freezer combo with a built-in water and ice dispenser, it's important to thoroughly clean the dispenser so your water and ice remains fresh and clean. Scrub away any water buildup and residue from not just the dispenser, but the water grate beneath it, with a toothbrush to keep your appliance looking new and your water — both frozen and still — contaminant-free.

When you change out your vertical mounted water filter every two or three months, be sure to also thoroughly scrub clean the various parts of the water filter mechanism. This includes the filter that water passes through where most vertical mount water filters attach to the sink. With a toothbrush, it's easy to scrub away any particles caught within the filter and eliminate any water buildup trapped within the water filter holder.

Intricate cabinet and drawer handles can be difficult to polish and clean with a regular cloth or sponge. Using a toothbrush to really scrub at the residual grease, dust, or dirt build-up that has accumulated on your kitchen hardware can get them shining like they're brand new. A toothbrush's bristles are delicate enough to scrub away dirt without damaging any metal finishes. The bristles are also narrow enough to really snag and eliminate dust and dirt that settles in the smallest nooks and crannies of your kitchen knobs and handle designs.