Is it Better to Store Your Toothbrush in the Medicine Cabinet
September 1, 2020
A new bathroom cleanliness study from the American Society for Microbiology has our skin crawling — and double-checking our toothbrush storage tactics. – GH
Unfortunately, medicine cabinets happen to be one of the worst choices out there for storing your toothbrushes.
There are some specific things that determine how suited a place would be for storing your toothbrushes. Now, we are going to take a look at these over the course of today’s article, so keep reading to find out about these in detail.
However, once again, to answer the question directly, do not store your toothbrush in the medicine cabinet. This applies even more if it’s wet when you’re planning to store it away.
[We’re going to take a look at the ideal conditions to store your toothbrush as well as the main things to keep in mind when judging the right spot for storing your toothbrush in, so keep reading!]
What are the main things to keep in mind?
There are some really important things that must be kept in mind when selecting the right spot. These include both features for the spot as well as the right position and condition for your toothbrush.
So, let’s take a look at the main things that you simply cannot forget about if you plan to keep your toothbrush worthy of using the next day:
- Drying the Brush: The first thing that you must keep in mind is that your brush must be dry when you’re storing it away. Storing away a wet brush in a closed space would spell disaster for your dental hygiene, and so that’s something you need to avoid.
- Keeping the brush upright: A lot of experts also recommend keeping your brush upright. This apparently helps the water in moving away from the head. This is actually a pretty good idea as well, and is something you might want to keep in mind.
- Selecting the right room: Selecting the right room is the key to keeping your toothbrush worthy of use. Most of the people store their toothbrush in the toilet. And you wanna know what happens? Quoting PopSugar,
Brushing and flushing: If you’re like most people, you keep your toothbrush in the bathroom. But whenever you flush the toilet, bacteria gets sprayed into the air where it lands on your toothbrush bristles. Totally disgusting, I know. Keep your toothbrush at least three feet away from the toilet. Or, better yet, just keep the toilet lid closed.
- Don’t let it touch another toothbrush: One of the most common mistakes that are made is that a lot of toothbrushes are kept together. This actually helps the spread of bacteria. If you’re really concerned about your dental hygiene, this is one of the things you must consider changing.
- Try not to store your toothbrush in a closed space: One of the best ideas is to not store your toothbrush in a closed space until you’re sure that it’s perfectly dry. Because, otherwise, you’d be inviting the bacteria to breed on your toothbrush and ruin your dental and oral hygiene.
Is it better to store your toothbrush in the medicine cabinet?
Well, we’ve already answered the question, but let’s do it again: A big NO seems to be the only justifiable answer in this scenario.
There are several reasons as to why storing your toothbrush in the medicine cabinet does not sound like a good idea at all. The main ones of these are as follows:
- Closed Space: Your medicine cabinet is a closed space. It cuts your toothbrush off from air supply, which makes it impossible for it to dry if it isn’t dry already. This is one of the things that are best avoided, making this idea a very bad one.
- The toothbrush cannot be kept upright: Now, in case the water hasn’t run off properly yet, you need to keep the toothbrush upright. However, this is yet another thing that you really cannot do inside a medicine cabinet. This makes medicine cabinets a bad choice to store your toothbrush as well.
- Conductive to germs: For the same reasons, your toothbrush is much more prone to germs. The germs and bacteria on it can breed while you aren’t even suspecting it!
Given these two really obvious reasons, it’s perhaps the safest bet not to keep it in the medicine cabinet.
However, it is undeniable that a lot of us actually still do it nonetheless. Quoting ApartmentTherapy,
For most of us, our toothbrushes are generic, brightly colored wands (sometimes covered in toothpaste residue…) that we yank out of the medicine cabinet each morning and night just long enough to do the job intended before quickly tossing them back in again. They’re kind of ugly and not really deserving of any prime space on the vanity. And with all the gross particles flying around the bathroom, it only makes sense that we stow them away behind a closed door — right?
However, as we saw earlier, there are quite a lot of reasons as to why this must be avoided. And that’s something you should keep in mind if you’re planning take another step towards achieving the perfect dental health!
Don’t forget to wash and sterilize your toothbrush properly!
One of the most important things to do is wash your toothbrush properly. Storing it is good and all, but washing actually makes most of the difference, because that’s when you wash off the germs as well.
So, you need to make sure that you’re washing your toothbrush and sterilizing your toothbrush properly.
Now, what should you sterilize your toothbrush with? Good question.
As it turns out, there are quite a lot of choices out there. In fact, there are so many choices that people have a pretty hard time deciding which one they should go for.
However, there’s no need for you to worry. Tooth Advocates has already prepared articles about each of these choices that you can check out and decide for yourself.
[Here are some of the main ones that you must check out!]
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