Dental Floss – A Traveler’s Best Friend

A fishing rod made out of a spork, safety pin and dental floss.

Dental Floss is the ultimate multifunctional tool to take with you on your travels. There are so many things you can do with dental floss apart from flossing your teeth. Below are some great ideas use dental floss and a couple other items you may have in your micro mini travel sewing kit:

Use dental floss to make a a clothes line
Even if you travel with a little travel clothesline sometimes you may not enough space to hang out all your clothes to dry. An easy fix for this is to grab your dental floss and tie it between two trees (or whatever) to make a clothes line. You would be surprised how hardy this clothesline will be.

Use dental floss to make a shade sail
Once your clothing has dried on your dental floss clothesline, hang your sarong on it, tying one of the ends to the dental floss and then hold down the other end of the sarong with sand, rocks or anything heavy. You just made yourself a shade sail!

Sew up a mosquito net
Using your needle that you have packed in your incy wincy travel sewing kit, you can sew up a mosquito net easily with dental floss. As dental floss is a lot stronger and thicker than cotton, you will only need a few tight loops of the floss and the holes in the mosquito net will disappear like magic. You may be pleased to know that Tanya once repaired a mosquito net in Thailand using dental floss without even having a needle. It was a little harder to accomplish but completely doable.

Use as a temporary shoe lace
Oh noes… your shoelace broke! Well luckily, you have a container of dental floss handy! The almighty strength of dental floss will make a perfectly unattractive shoelace until you find a new replacement. I guess you could change over both shoes if you are worried about them matching.

Make a minty fishing line using a safety pin as a hook
Have dental floss? Check. Have a safety pin? Check. Have a stick? Check. Presto! Make yourself a fishing line and try and catch yourself some dinner! Attach the dental floss to the length of a branch. Open up the safety pin and tie the dental floss to the little circular hole at the bottom part. The sharp pin from the safety pin will be your hook. You just never know, a free and tasty dinner may be on its way. Maybe.

Sew up your clothes if you run out of cotton from your mini sewing kit
If you run out of cotton from your itsy witsty teeny weeny sewing kit, you can easily use dental floss to mend your clothes or even sew a button. Using dental floss to sew on a button would make it stay on longer due to its strength anyhow.

Use it as a temporary lock on your suitcase – tie the locks together.
One way to keep your luggage in order is to lock up your bags when you are on public transport, whether it is a plane, bus, train or ferry. Alternatively, you bag may simply be broken and won't stay closed. To keep your bag securely closed temporarily tie it all together using dental floss. This works really well. So well that you may have trouble opening your bag at your destination.

Have you got any great travel stories that include dental floss?

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