Refinements

As you follow the UL journey you'll eventually start questioning the small things. The meme joke is cutting/shortening your toothbrush. While I think that's stupid (just get a toothbrush that's shorter/lighter to begin with), the idea of thrifting your toiletries is a legit one. Inevitably you'll end up contemplating your choice not only of toothbrush, but also of toothpaste. Clearly a full size tube is unnecessary. So you might consider a travel size. In most cases that's still an unnecessary amount. How much do you actually use per day/weekend/week anyway? It's not much. Eventually you'll come across someone on Reddit (like me) suggesting toothpaste tablets. What are they? Dried toothpaste in the format of a pill or tablet. Rather than bring a tube (no matter how small) you can simply count out the number of tablets you need and bring them in a small plastic bag, just like any other pill. While you can MYOG them by drying blobs of toothpaste on a cookie sheet in the oven (type "MYOG toothpaste tablets" into Google and read what the AI brings up), I buy mine.

I do not proport to be an expert on every toothpaste tablet on the market, however I've got experience with two different brands and clearly have a preference.

Garage Grown Gear sells Un-paste. I really dislike these. They are white. They taste like chalk and are not very durable, meaning if you have some of them in you ditty bag and they get jostled around or slightly damp they are very likely to turn to dust/mush.

Both Litesmith and Dutchware sell Archtek. These are blue, taste like mint, and are much more durable. I highly recommend these.

Keep hiking my friends.

Isle Royale National Park, bugs and rain, July 2025