21 uses for floss in isolation
1. Make an Alarm
Tie a few tin or aluminium cans and lids to a length of the floss and string it across the perimeter of your office, camp or outside your home. Because the floss is difficult to see, intruders will sound your hobo alarm. This will prove useful as a boundary around your ‘work from home’ space to keep children out.
2. As a Clothesline
Should you not be able to get to Bunnings to replace a broken clothesline, string a line of floss between two trees and use it as a makeshift clothesline for your tracksuit pants. Trackpants during COVID-19 are important.
3. Mend Clothing
Floss is strong enough to sew on buttons, mend shirts, pants, and even shoes. Lost your plug from your double pluggers? No problem, sew it back on with floss.
4. Support Climbing Plants
If you’re doomsday prepping and now embarking on growing your own food, plants such as peas, tomatoes, or anything that climbs can be supported with floss and a stake.
5. As a Shoelace
If your shoelaces break, thread dental floss and use that instead. It’s not perfect, but it should be strong enough to keep your shoes on your feet. Not that you’re going anywhere.
6. Hairties
You don’t want your child’s hair to get in the way of their iPad screen and disrupt your own Netflix viewing. Floss makes a sturdy hairtie. Also useful for adults who aren’t going to get to a hairdresser for a while and don’t actually own hair bands to tie back their developing mullets.
7. Make a Rope
Braiding several strands of dental floss together will create a strong rope you can use to pull gear, hang heavy items or pull your child from the bed to the couch and back again. It’s a true story that someone escaped from jail with a rope made from floss and another used floss to saw through the bars of his cell.
8. Make a Snare
Run out of food? Learn how to make traps and snares that will catch small game for you to eat. The floss is sturdy enough to hold on to most small to medium-sized critters you may snare in your backyard.
9. Make a Fishing Pole
If you don’t have a fishing pole to nab the goldfish out of the pond, you can make a quick one out of floss and a branch. Just fashion a hook and tie it to the end of the line, and you’ll be ready to go fishing for dinner.
10. Make a Tripwire
String the floss nice and tightly around the perimeter of your kitchen to prevent children from snacking frequently. Anybody who comes traipsing into the kitchen at an unauthorised time will fall over before they can reach the fridge. The thin floss will blend in, especially if you have pale coloured flooring.
11. Hang Up Your Food
It’s important to keep tasty treats out of reach of pests, raccoons, bears and children. The floss can be tied around a bag and then tied around a tree branch. Suspending your food off the ground will keep it from getting wet from dew on the ground as well.
12. Start a Fire
Sick of homework sheets? If you need to make a bow drill to start a fire, you could use floss as your cordage to spin the stick back and forth.
13. As Restraints
It isn’t pleasant to think about, but if you have to restrain somebody (*a child), several strands of floss around their wrists should do it.
14. As Stitches
Do you have a cut but don’t want to sit in ED with all the sick people? If you get cut and need to close the wound, dental floss can be used to sew your skin back together.
15. To Fix Leaking Taps
Use floss instead of plumber’s tape to stop a dripping tap.
16. Hanging Pictures
Use floss to hang all those new pictures and craft activities.
17. Remove a Tight Ring
Floss can be threaded under a ring that’s stuck due to being home and Fattening the Curve with frequent snacking.
18. Craft Activities
Stringing popcorn, beads, Froot Loops. Cutting playdough. Just kidding, please don’t buy Froot Loops, they’re bad for teeth.
19. Cleaning Electronic Devices
Twistie crumbs in your laptop? Use floss to clean in tiny nooks and crannies.
20. Pull Out a Loose Tooth.
Is your dentist on government restrictions and can’t help? DIY dentistry at home.
21. In the Kitchen
Trussing a roast, cutting soft foods such as cake, cheese or hard-boiled eggs and sliding under biscuits that are stuck to baking trays.
For an article on how and why to floss for kids click here.