5 Reasons You Should Keep Toothpaste in the Kitchen

Shifrah Combiths
Shifrah Combiths
With five children, Shifrah is learning a thing or two about how to keep a fairly organized and pretty clean house with a grateful heart in a way that leaves plenty of time for the people who matter most. Shifrah grew up in San Francisco, but has come to appreciate smaller town…read more
updated Jun 5, 2019
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(Image credit: Marie-Lyne Quirion)

I love finding ways to use things I already have in new life-hack-y ways. Take toothpaste, for example. It’s something we all have in our bathrooms. Turns out, though, that it might be worth keeping a tube in the kitchen, too, as it can do a bunch of other useful things — you know, in addition to fighting tooth decay!

Keep reading to see how toothpaste can be used in the kitchen.

1. It can remove water stains from wood.

Gently rubbing non-gel toothpaste on water rings can remove them from a wooden table.

2. It can shine chrome.

Scrubbing chrome fixtures with a dab of toothpaste will make them gleam. Rub the toothpaste into a chrome faucet with a rag and then buff with a clean rag.

3. You can squirt some on your hands to remove fish, onion, or garlic smells from your hands.

I love cooking with garlic, but I do not love catching whiffs of it from my hands for the rest of the day. Toothpaste will freshen up your hands just like it freshens up your mouth. Simply squeeze some toothpaste into your hands and rub it around on your fingers and palms. Then wash your hands as usual.

4. It can get odors out of food storage containers and more.

You know that plastic Tupperware that smells of spaghetti or the Instant Pot insert that smells of chicken stock no matter how hard you scrub? Using toothpaste and a scouring pad will erase those odors for good.

5. It can refresh your disposal.

When you think your toothpaste tube is empty, whether it’s the one you’ve been using to brush your teeth or the one you keep in the kitchen, cut off the top of the tube, fill the tube with warm water, and then pour the contents down your disposal. You’ll be freshening up your disposal and, incidentally, putting every single drop of toothpaste to good use!

This post originally ran on Apartment Therapy. See it there: Why You Should Keep Toothpaste in the Kitchen

Do you have any uses to add? Put them in the comments below!