Five Things I Hate About Toothpaste

I have always disliked toothpaste, but I've never really thought why. Here are a few reasons. I'm sure you could contribute some more. Or am I on my own here?

1) Worst of all, the tickly toothpaste cough.

This happens so rarely that some of you may never have encountered it. It tends to occur at night when you are trying to go to sleep.

You've brushed your teeth as normal, and everything is going swimmingly until you feel an excruciating tickle at the back of your throat.

You can't get to sleep because every few minutes you're interrupted by the tickle that forces you to cough. Every time you swallow it brings on the tickle.

This leads to a terrible cycle of death.

Cough, swallow, tickle, cough, swallow tickle...

I would speculate that it is more likely to occur if you have a sore throat, but I have plagued by the tickly toothpaste cough when I have been absolutely fine.

2) The congealed gunk.

This sticky, white, smeary mess ends up on the toothbrush holder, on the sink, in the toothpaste cup (or wherever you stash the toothpaste tube).

3) The stains on the clothes.

These invariably get discovered later in the day, like when you're walking to work and find an embarrassing white smear of toothpaste on your trousers, or down the front of your navy blue shirt.

Note, toothpaste somehow never gets on white shirts, it can't be bothered with that.

4) The toothpaste at the foot of the tube.

For some reason we continue day after day with a tube that is basically finished, desperately trying to get the toothpaste out of the foot of the tube.

I'm not sure if this is an environmental thing, not wanting to waste it etc, or just a "I'll buy a new tube tomorrow" kinda thing.

5) The cupboard full of tubes.

With the toothpaste situation it is usually one extreme or another. Either we're doing our best to squeeze toothpaste out of an empty tube, or we have somehow ended up with a cupboard full of tubes.

The latter occurs because we can never find a new tube when required, so buy a new one, or typically we buy a few on some sort of deal. The spares get put in a drawer or cupboard, but can't be found when needed, and so it goes on.

Then one day you come back from the shop with a new tube and find that you have a stash in the bathroom already. The cluster of toothpaste tubes laughs at you for having struggled with an empty tube for the last two weeks.