Listerine 21-Day Challenge: Getting Our Mouths ULTRACLEAN!

I’ve always felt like I have good oral hygiene. I brush my teeth twice a day, after all. But then I read that brushing alone misses 75% of your mouth.  Can you believe it? I was shocked. I’m determined for our whole family to take great care of our teeth, so we are taking part in the Listerine 21-Day Challenge.

Right now our oral care routine is pretty simple – brushing our teeth twice a day, with occasional flossing. AND, I recently learned we weren’t brushing our teeth for nearly long enough each time – you’re supposed to brush for two minutes minimum, which feels like a long time. So we definitely have some work to do!

Here are some tips we learned for adults:

• Keep your bottle of mouthwash in a visible spot in the bathroom (out of reach of the children) along with your toothbrush and a rinsing cup so that you remember to rinse twice a day.
• Give it time. It can take up to three weeks to form a healthy habit (hence the 21 day challenge!) – stick with it, and let the results motivate you to keep it a part of your daily routine.

And here are a couple of tips for kids:

• Make oral care fun – turn flossing into a funny-face contest, or make brushing a “Simon Says” game by calling out different parts of the mouth.
• Play your kids’ favorite music to help them brush and rinse as long as they should!
• Reward healthy behavior. Offer rewards for achieving brushing, flossing and rinsing goals.

As we participate in the Listerine 21-Day Challenge we will make sure we’re brushing the full two minutes, but more importantly we’re going to start using Listerine mouthwash. By using that, we can clean virtually 100 percent of our mouths. I am so glad we’re doing this early on with the kids so that they develop GREAT habits at a young age! Our boys are 3 & 5, and playing is MUCH more appealing than hygiene to them right now, but we want them to understand the importance of taking good care of themselves.

The boys are super excited to use their Phineas and Ferb mouthwash, and Brian and I love the clean feel we get after using the ULTRACLEAN mouthwash. It’s so nice to know our mouths are truly clean after using it!

What’s your oral care routine like? Do you use mouthwash, or do you just brush your teeth? I hope you’ll join in and participate too – a healthier, cleaner mouth is waiting for you! You can sign up to participate at www.facebook.com/listerine – for every person who signs up for the challenge, the Listerine brand will make a contribution to help Oral Health America’s “Smiles Across America” program toward their goal of connecting 210,000 children with needed oral health services in 2013.

Some other facts to consider:

• There are more germs in your mouth than there are people on earth!

• Oral disease is now the most chronic childhood illness in the U.S.

• More than 51 million school hours and 164 million work hours are lost each year due to dental disease.

It’s easy to see how important it is to take good care of your mouth. I’ll be checking in during our 21-Day challenge (we started on the first to make it easy to keep track) and letting you know how it’s going – and I’d love to hear from you, too!

Note: I received products from Johnson & Johnson Healthcare Products Division of McNEIL-PPC, Inc. and The Motherhood as part of my participation in the LISTERINE 21 Day Challenge. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are honest and are my own.