How to floss every day
Updated 19 August 2026
Short answer
Attach it to putting your toothbrush down rather than to “after brushing”, and set the hard-day version at two teeth. Keep the floss out on the side, not in a drawer.
The reason this one fails is unusually specific: brushing has a strong feeling of completion, and anything planned for after it is competing with the sense that the job is done. Moving the cue to a moment inside that sequence is most of the fix.
- “After brushing” is too late. Putting the toothbrush down is an event; being finished is a feeling.
- Two teeth is a real hard-day version. It keeps the sequence intact.
- Floss in a drawer is a decision. Floss on the side is a cue.
- Guilt from a dentist is a poor motivator and a well-known one. The plan is the thing to change.
- Flossing is one of the most commonly abandoned habits, which says more about how it is usually planned than about the people planning it.
- What flossing does for your teeth is a question for a dentist. This page is about making it happen.
Why flossing specifically fails
Flossing is close to the ideal habit on paper. It takes a minute, needs no equipment beyond a box that costs very little, happens in a fixed place, and attaches to something everybody already does twice a day. It should be the easiest habit on this site. It is one of the least kept.
The reason is the shape of the cue. Almost everyone plans it as "after brushing" — and brushing ends with a strong signal of completion. You spit, you rinse, you put the brush away, and the bathroom task is over. A new task introduced at that exact moment has to overcome the sense of having finished, and that is a much bigger obstacle than the one minute involved.
The second reason is where the floss lives. In a drawer or a cabinet, it requires a decision and an action before the habit can even start. On the side, next to the toothbrush, it is a visible cue rather than a retrieval task.
The plan
The moment. Putting your toothbrush down. That is an event with a hard edge, and it sits inside the sequence rather than after it. Two alternatives: brushing your teeth at night, taken as the whole block, or turning the bathroom light on, which is the earliest possible cue and works well for people who floss first.
The ordinary version. Floss properly. Every tooth. Floss and use mouthwash if that is your routine.
The hard-day version. Two teeth. The front ones. One gap. This is the part that sounds like a joke and is the reason the habit is still there in March.
Where it lives. Out, next to the toothbrush, lid off if it has one.
Flossing is one of the ready-made habits in Mini Loops, with those cues and sizes already written. See it on the App Store
Before or after brushing
People ask this constantly, and for habit-building purposes the honest answer is that the order matters far less than whether the cue is an event. Both work. What decides it is which one you will actually repeat.
There is an argument for flossing first: you arrive at it before the sense of completion, and brushing then acts as the reward at the end rather than the obstacle in the way. If "after brushing" has failed for you more than once, that reordering is the cheapest thing to try.
Whether one order is better for your teeth is a question for a dentist, and this page has no view on it.
On being told off
Most people arrive at this habit after a dentist told them to. That is a poor starting position, and it is worth naming: guilt produces a fortnight of thorough flossing and then nothing, which is the pattern nearly everyone reports.
The reason is not weakness. It is that guilt sets the standard at "properly, every tooth, every night" and offers no version for a day that ends at one in the morning. A plan with a two-tooth floor keeps going long after the guilt has worn off, and long after is when this habit is either kept or lost.
If it stops happening
- "Forgot" repeatedly. Move the floss before anything else, then move the cue earlier in the sequence.
- "Too tired" repeatedly. You are still doing the full version on hard nights. Use the two-tooth version and stop treating it as cheating.
- "Didn't want to" repeatedly. Often the floss itself. Picks, tape and a different brand are not the same experience, and this is one of the few habits where changing the equipment genuinely changes the outcome.
Common questions
How do I make flossing a daily habit?
Attach it to putting your toothbrush down rather than to the vague moment after brushing, keep the floss out on the side where you can see it, and set a hard-day version of two teeth. The two-tooth version is what keeps the habit alive on the nights the full version will not happen.
Should I floss before or after brushing?
For building the habit, whichever you will repeat. There is a case for flossing first, because you reach it before the sense of being finished with the bathroom. Whether the order matters for your teeth is a question for a dentist.
Why do I always stop flossing after a couple of weeks?
Usually because the plan was set at the full version by someone feeling guilty, and there was no smaller version for the first bad night. Guilt reliably produces a fortnight and then nothing. A plan with a floor outlasts it.
Is flossing two teeth pointless?
As dental care, ask a dentist. As habit-building, it is the whole point: the association being learned is that putting the toothbrush down is followed by flossing, and two teeth teaches that as well as thirty-two do.
Where should I keep floss so I actually use it?
Out on the side, next to your toothbrush, in sight. In a drawer or a cabinet it becomes a retrieval task that has to be decided on before the habit can start, and that decision is where it fails.
How long does it take for flossing to feel automatic?
It is a simple behaviour attached to a very reliable daily cue, which are the two conditions that make habits settle faster. The median across habits in the field research was 66 days, with a wide range between people.