Metal Mouth Message Board

I know this seems like a trivial matter, but I'm asking for suggestions on disposing of elastics. I'm going through about ten of those buggers a day and try as I can to get them in the trash they often bounce out and go hiding in the bathroom. I noticed while cleaning the bathroom about six that should have been in the trash but had wandered here and there.

Anyone have any clever ideas to dispose of these things so they go away?

Mike

Mike, I haven't been wearing my class II elastics for about 8 weeks now, ever since my ortho told me to leave them off for now because they were opening my bite too much, yet I found one in the bathroom just today! And yes, I do clean my house I have no idea where it had been hiding all that time.

I would also like to hear about this. I remember finding my sister's everywhere in the house when she had them; now it's my turn!

chef's are all over the place except the kitchen...so far he has managed to keep them out of the food, both here and at work!

I find elastics everywhere! I'm not a slob, it's not like I take them off outside of the bathroom, so I have no idea how they end up on my kitchen counter. Who knows? I think we all have that problem!

When I was in elastics I would find them EVERYWHERE in the bathroom - I think they have little legs.... The only way I was able to keep them in the trash was to wrap them in toilet paper and throw that away, but I usually forgot to do that. Here's a thought - you could get some sort of small case, like a retainer case and dispose of them in there; that way you can make it a point to put them in there and throw them away en masse. That way there would be a lid to keep them from crawling out, too!

At restaurants I would take them out and put them on my pinky. I would pop them out quickly at the table and slip them on my finger, no one noticed (or they were too polite to comment!) I also bought a small compact mirror and would take them out, put them in the mirror and snap it shut. I kept my own self-made DentaKit in my purse; I bought a zippered change purse that could hold the mirror, a bag of elastics, a proxy brush, a travel toothbrush and threader floss. It worked great!

Oh man, there are elastics in every corner of my house!

Last week a few friends replaced my bedroom window and they said the found about 20 of them! At night I put my elastics in right before bed, as part of my whole nighttime "routine" and, since most of the time I have lotion or whatever on my hands, those little buggers go FLYING all over the place never to be found (or so i thought).

I predict I'll be finding them for at least another year.

PARR wrote:chef's are all over the place except the kitchen...so far he has managed to keep them out of the food, both here and at work!

haha would be a lovely suprise to find someones elastic in your food!!

Yeah they go everywhere. I only wear 3 day and think they're going in the bin but somehow they seem to wander all over the room!!

Hahaha!!!! That is hilarious because that's what happened to me too! They just magically appear everywhere! I've found some on the coffee table in the living room, in the couch cushions, armrests of the couch, bathroom floor, in towels, by my computer at home. Bathroom I understand, but I'm hardly ever at my own house. I spend most of my time at my other half's house and I've never found any at his house. He'll come over and sit down on the couch and ask me why I have elastics all over the table or one will get stuck to the bottom of his toe when he's barefoot. Do they just magically breed?

I have them all over the bathroom also. My dustbuster picks them up pretty well. I guess if they bother you that much you could flush them down the toilet.

I can't tell you how many times I've picked up that little baggie the wrong way and it was open and I dumped them all over the counter....down the drain...etc. I always have to ask for extras.

I have an idea - set up an elastic shooting range. If you have more than elastic wearer in your household, you can have contests for accuracy, distance, etc.

2 ideas I have about this.

Or they fall on the ground and disappear in some kind of black hole that is there,
very invisible but spread flat over the floor. They travel through time and appear
at another time at the same place, this is called single spot time travel. They may
appear after some days, weeks or maybe months.

But I think there is also multi spot time travel. All us brace wearers have this
weird bond that ties us together. No, not only this site. It can happen that elastics
of one person appear in the house of another patient. There is still need of a very
thorough study to prove this, but I am sure it happens. It will involve one patient
losing an elastic in a very strange color combination, this is called a tracer elastic,
and a world span survey to find it back.

akireamil I was told by my ortho to wear my elastics while eating, but I would take them off sometimes, depending on what I was eating. I just made sure to put them on right after I was done.

Sometimes I kept them on during meals and other times I took them off. Just depended on the meal situation.

The first time I had braces(as a teen) I was told to leave them in while eating, and did. The second time (got them off Feb. '07) I was told to take them out. I wonder why this is?

I think it might depend of the degree of movement needed????