Help with the Dental Hygiene

but Elmo has no teeth?

These days it's becoming a bit of a challenge to brush my teeth. I've long since moved over to an electric toothbrush, but to get in the toothpaste onto the brush has become quite an adventure.

Whatever usually do is rest the toothpaste on the counter place my left hand on the to, and try to line up the toothbrush with my right hand and then squish it… Hoping it wouldn't get everywhere. It turned into quite a balancing act. Backspace and this was getting even more difficult as the to both Tuesdays with getting down to about half full.

So started to look around online for an automatic toothpaste
dispenser. Finding one was actually pretty easy. There are several types to choose from on Amazon. But I found a pretty good one for around about C$15. Unfortunately, this particular project does not seem to have a specific name in the boxes shipped in is all written in Korean. That said, you should double to find this particular item (left) pretty easily.

Yep, I'm not the
only one drooling…

The toothpaste dispenser is designed to attach to the wall/mirror using 3M double-sided tape. This works okay, but in my case I have a bunch of little glass tiles where I've mounted it and sticks less well to those. Probably also because my three-year-old likes to pull it off the wall…

Anyway, is designed to work by screwing in your tube of toothpaste from the top and is a little lever in the whole that you push with toothbrush. This squeezes the tube of toothpaste and opens a valve dropping a portion of toothpaste (hopefully) on the brush. The first week or two, this didn't work out too terribly well. I found the amount of toothpaste delivered insufficient and often it was quite messy. In part because the toothpaste was either not dropping properly or because of my shaky hands would dump it all of the dispenser.

However, I seem to have gotten the hang of it… I guess there is apparently a bit of a technique for people with shaky hands and is working quite well right now. It does however still create a little bit of a mess.

Me and my boy!
… No, not really…

Also, if your hands are about as functional as mine. Meaning you have difficulty holding her hands up, I found that sticking it to the wall, flush to the counter works quite well. This makes it easy for me to use both hands, sliding them first the dispenser. This also makes it much easier for me to press the lever at the back of the dispenser. Thus getting a more appropriate amount of toothpaste. This also stabilizes the shakiness of my hands, so I make less of a mess.

Pro:

• much easier than the toothpaste tube/toothbrush balancing act
• reasonably well controlled portion of toothpaste

Con:

• can be a bit messy
• double-sided tape can wear out and limit what you can stick it to. My options were the glass tiled wall or the Wood Cabinet. I'm pretty sure it would've ruined that

Cost: I paid about C$15 with shipping. Pretty good price.

You can check out an example of it in action here. This is just an example I found on YouTube, this is not my house ;-) Honestly though, given the cost it's really well worth the try.