How to Get the Most Out of Toothpicks

Most people have plenty of toothpicks in a kitchen drawer but don’t think to use them around the home. If you’ve hired a San Antonio moving company and have your belongings packed away in boxes, toothpicks can get you out of plenty of pinches.

Whether you need to fix something around your new home, sanitize dirty belongings, or touch up some paint, toothpicks offer precision and convenience when you need it.

Fill a nail hole. As belongings and boxes are moved into your new home, you may notice a piece of furniture that has a hole. Toothpicks can easily fix this problem! Coat a toothpick in some glue and let it dry. Then you can cut the end off, insert it into the hole, sand the end, stain the toothpick the same color as the furniture, and voila! You can use a similar technique if you have lost a screw to a pair of glasses too.

Unclog a glue bottle’s nozzle. While unpacking, you might start doing some quick fixes around the home with glue. If your glue bottle is clogged up, unclog it with a toothpick.

Paint your new home. If your new home’s walls have some chips, you can use toothpicks to touch up the paint. The small size is perfect for detail work! You can even add edge to your paint job with toothpicks, by dragging one back and forth over a wet wall. This will give the wall texture. And if you’re doing a larger paint job and tape up the baseboards, you can mark the end of the roll of tape with a toothpick. This way it won’t be so tough to find the end of the roll the next time you need it.

Disinfect dirty items. Frequently used items like remote controls and home phones are rarely cleaned and covered in bacteria. To get in between those hard-to-reach buttons, soak a toothpick in alcohol and use the end of the toothpick to clean in the cracks of the remote or home phone. You can wrap the ends of the toothpick in cotton or a paper towel too, in order to make it scrub the surfaces. Tackle these projects while you are unpacking after your move, to ensure that your new home is clean.

Light a candle. If your lighter is not long enough to reach a candle’s wick, you can use a toothpick. It burns slower than a match, so it is safer.

Keep worms away from your garden. Nothing says home like a colorful garden. And nothing ruins a garden quite like cutaway worms. To keep these little monsters away from your freshly-planted flowers, place a few buried toothpicks around the base of each plant. This will deter worms and caterpillars from choking the necks of your growing flowers.

Grow a potato plant. If your new yard looks bare, you can start a garden with some things already in your fridge (and toothpicks, of course). Poke four toothpicks about ¼ an inch into a potato. Set the spud in a bowl of water about half submerged, place it in the sun, watch the roots grow, and then you can plant it in your yard.

Toothpicks are a great moving tool, so be sure to have a pack on hand during your move to San Antonio. Whether you’re unpacking, touching up paint, or disinfecting, you’ll find a use for them!