How to Build a Dollar Store Dental Kit for Your Bug Out Bag
Each of the kits got the basics: a toothbrush, toothpaste, and floss. Each of our bug out bags has water bottles with filters. Just a tiny amount of water is all you need to get your teeth and gums.
Do you have a dental kit for your bug-out bag? I’ve seen a lot of great bug-out bags loaded up with all manner of tacti-cool gear, tiny first aid kits stuffed into Altoid tins, and ultralight camping supplies. That’s wonderful and all, but where’s the dental kit?
For new preppers, a bug-out bag (BOB) holds the supplies you need to evacuate from your primary location to your (presumably safe) secondary location. Your bag is intended to get you from Point A to Point B.
Your Bug Out Bag Needs a Dental Kit
Since you aren’t living long-term out of your BOB, you may not think that dental supplies are as important as other supplies, like a good knife or paracord. After all, what’re a few days without brushing your teeth going to hurt, right?
Mouth pain is no joke. Imagine you ended up with some food stuck between your teeth. I find that wildly irritating and have to get it out. Otherwise, the gum swells, becomes tender, and sometimes bleeds. Food can stay stuck there, rotting, causing bacteria to breed like rabbits. Next thing you know, you have an infection.
If you think mouth pain is miserable now, imagine it post-SHTF, with no access to a local pharmacy and no local dentist. Why deal with that, when simple brushing and flossing can dislodge that bit of beef jerky from your teeth?
Here’s another example for you. You are bugging out, and while eating, a cap breaks off or a filling comes out. If you have the right supplies, you can fix that and get on with your bug out. Hopefully, there is a dentist where you are going. And hopefully, that dentist’s office and still has power. But, imagine having to finish your bug out with an open cavity in your mouth.
You could fall and end up with a wound in your mouth, lose a tooth, or a half-dozen other things that are prevented by regular, daily dental hygiene. If this is going to be a long-term bug out, daily hygiene becomes even more important to prevent cavities, gum disease, and infections.
Dollar Store Dental Preps
Everyone gets strapped for cash once in a while. Some of us pinch pennies more often than others. While wholesale clubs and buying in bulk may give you the best deal for your dollar, not everyone has the cash up front to pay for a 5-pack of family-sized toothpaste. Never mind that the family-size toothpaste is way too big for a bug out bag anyway.
While I have dental kits for our family’s emergency bags already, I decided to try a dollar store prepping experiment.
First, I would raid my local dollar and discount stores for dental hygiene supplies.
Second, I would make dental kits out of these supplies suitable for a 72-hour bag.
Third, I needed to keep the cost of each individual kit under $10
Shopping Trip for Dental Preps
The first store I went to was Dollar Zone. I spent $10 and bought a bunch of stuff. I wasn’t able to find everything here. But, I did pick up some important items, plus a couple of non-dental items because I couldn’t pass them up.
Items purchased at Dollar Zone:
3-pack of toothbrushes and travel cases, 2 packages
Dental floss, 4 containers
Dental instrument kit (mirror, explorer, probe, flossers, etc)
3-pack of wet wipes (so many hygiene uses for these)
Antibiotic cream (not dental, but went into my general supplies)
My Dollar Zone total was $9.50 with tax. I would have picked up toothpaste here, but they had no small tubes of toothpaste at all. Everything was just too large to make sense in a bug out bag.
Next, I went to Family Dollar. This technically isn’t a “dollar store” where everything in the store costs just a buck. But, it’s a discount store that’s very similar. I made a couple of cool finds here.
Items purchased at Family Dollar:
Toothpaste, 4 small tubes for $2.50 each
Temporary repair kit for fillings and caps for $3
Orajel, Double Medicated, for $3
Antiseptic mouthwash, $1
Total Family Dollar total was $18.06 with tax. The receipt also had a $5 coupon off a purchase of $25 this coming Saturday only. There were a bunch of other items there perfect for budget prepping, from bug out bags to food storage to first aid kits. I will make another dollar store prepping trip this Saturday, and let you know what cool preps I find.
Go paid at the $5 a month level, and we will send you both the PDF and e-Pub versions of “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! and a coupon code for 10% off anything in the Government-Scam.com/Store.
Go paid at the $50 a year level, and we will send you a free paperback edition of Etienne’s book “Government” - The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! AND a 64GB Liberator flash drive if you live in the US. If you are international, we will give you a $10 credit towards shipping if you agree to pay the remainder.
Support us at the $250 Founding Member Level and get an Everything Bundle – The Sampler of Liberty! - Get it free by going paid as a Founding Member!
Give me Liberty... and give me more! The Everything Bundle includes the latest version of our flagship book on government, along with a collection of potentially life-altering introductions to voluntaryism, agorism and peaceful anarchy.
“Government” – The Biggest Scam in History… Exposed! by Etienne de la Boetie2
Anarchy Exposed! - A former police officer reports on his investigative journeyby Shepard the Voluntaryist and Larken Rose
The Most Dangerous Superstition by Larken Rose
Sedition, Subversion and Sabotage – Field Manual #1 by Ben Stone, The Bad Quaker, and Ken Yamarashi
What Anarchy Isn’t– A short pamphlet by Larken Rose… The perfect introduction to peaceful anarchy
Three Friends Free – A Children’s Story of Voluntaryism
The Liberator is a 64GB wafer flash drive filled with books, documentaries, podcasts, MP3s, short videos, and music from the truth movement’s leading artists. The credit card-sized format makes it convenient to keep in your wallet to share and copy easily.
Hydrogen peroxide 6% used as an anti-microbial mouthwash would be at the top of my list, along with clove oil.