Cleaning out your bathroom cabinet can sometimes be painful. More often than not, the items that we purchase for our morning routines don't come at low prices. We buy potions and lotions and cremes that hide our wrinkles and shine our hair and it's not an easy thing to part with them when the time comes. But how do you know what goes?
Sorting through old or unused items in your bathroom cabinets is as easy as coming to terms with what your family is actually using. There are of course preventative items that should always be on hand for cuts, burns, scrapes and more, but for the most part, that isn't the clutter that accumulates, bogging down your storage spaces. Check out the tips below to make purging and cleaning as easy as can be!
1. Pull Everything Out: You can't clean what you haven't faced. For bathrooms sinks with storage underneath, it's amazing how many things can fit underneath, so pull them out. Group like items together that might have been separated, put band-aids together, cleaning supplies together, medicine together and so forth. Now you're ready to go through each group without feeling overwhelmed by everything else.
2. Use It Or Lose It: So you bought some new hair wax a few months back and although you thought it was great the first few days, it started making you look like "that scene" from Something About Mary. You paid a good amount for it and maybe you'll need it someday for uhhh... backup wax, so you stashed it under the sink with that old skinny curling iron from the last trend. It's time to let it go. If you haven't used a product more than a few times, find a friend who wants it or just send it packing.
3. What's Today's Date?: All medications expire and the date is always printed on the packaging, even if you have to hunt for it. If it's old, toss it. Make a list of the items you need to repurchase so you can add them to your shopping list over the next few months. When you have a pain or your sick, the last thing you want is less of a dosage because the drug has lost potency over time.
4. Make Things Pretty: Although it seems silly to make your medicine cabinet or storage area pretty, you're more likely to keep things clean and sorted if you enjoy the space. Buy something new or diy something from things you already have, but making a change will help keep you on track.
5. Assess Your Need For More: .... storage that is. If your shelf, cabinet, or chest is too small for the items you're trying to hold, it will always feel cramped and cluttered. If your space won't hold additional storage, try finding a place elsewhere in your home to hold things that don't have to be stored in the bathroom. Try keeping medicine in the kitchen, or even in a plastic tub under your bed. That way, when you reach for the toothpaste, nothing will fall out on you!
Do you have a trick that always helps you clean things out? Share your secret in the comments below!
(image: Flickr member Mr. T in DC licensed for use by Creative Commons)
Before & After: Emily Henderson Transforms a Senior's Studio Space
Monica & Austin's Charming Bungalow
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Ercol Bar Stool
How To Cook Fluffy, Tasty Quinoa
True Greek Recipe: Paximadi Bread Salad with Tomatoes, Feta and Capers
Actually, it's not a good idea to keep medication in the medicine cabinet, unless it's just a powder room. The heat and humidity from the shower/bath can really shorten the life of drugs.
I don't even have a medicine cabinet, so I keep all our medication in a drawer.
uhh, don't toss the old medicine in the garbage. Take it to your local pharmacist who can dispose of it.
Agreed, Swordspoint. All my medicine has its own dedicated shelf in the linen closet just outside my bathroom. My medicine cabinet is just full of beauty supplies. It's actually more convenient that way, since I always use toner, moisturizer, etc. in the bathroom but don't need to use medication there.
I did realize that the drugs inside the medicine cabinet kind of melted together. I had to throw out so many drugs so it isn't a good idea. Try finding a spot in the kitchen away from the dishes that you can designate for medicines!
Storage for our "health and beauty aids" is always a problem, and as Swordspoint reminds us---the bathroom is a terrible place to keeps our medicine. I am a nomad, and keeping track of my medicine cabinet items was always a huge problem until one day I realized there where only two categories of items to sort out. Things that went INSIDE the body, and things that were used OUTSIDE the body.
So I bought two high-quality clear storage containers with with good latches and handles. I labeled them "Inside the Body" and "Outside the Body" and it solved all my problems.
I do not separate prescription drugs from over the counter drugs. If it is used inside the mouth or body, it goes in one container. If it is used on the outside of the body, it goes into the other.
And that's all you have to remember---inside or outside. I made sure my containers were tall enough to hold large bottles of cough syrup or other large bottles like suntan lotion or Calamine.
I've used this method for several years, and I've decided to add a third container for things like Ace bandages, wrist and ankle braces, arm slings, and et cetera.
Nothing as ever worked so well for me, and my husband knows exactly where to look for what he wants. And the "medicine chest" in the bathroom is used for daily items like toothpaste and mouthwash, deodorant, and shaving items.
I second Gem's comment. But not all pharmacists can collect drugs, especially since the class of drug can result in all sorts of legal issues.
So the best way to dispose of drugs, if you're local pharmacist or police station doesn't do so already, is to dump all the pharmaceuticals into a bag with kitty litter or sand (basically, something nasty to keep people from pilfering out of the garbage). Set the bag out with the rest of your trash collection.
Unfortunately, the pharmaceuticals will eventually degrade and likely leach ingredients into the waterways (i.e. our drinking water), but there's just no system set up right now for collection purposes.
I just empty all the old scripts into a candy dish and throw a handful in my face now and then when there's nothing better to do.
I agree that the bathroom is the worst place to keep medications - The Kitchen is a much more appropriate space, as long as it's away from dampness and heat.
Here's a company that works to keep unwanted/unused pharmaceuticals out of landfills and wastewater:
http://www.takebackexpress.com/
Thanks for the laugh, Jackson.
Just like a fresh bag of Halloween candy, right Jackson? :)
i'm giving this year's empty gesture award to the idea of recycling my expired meds at the pharmacist.
Hasn't this topic been talked too death? It's almost insulting for those who don't have bathroom cabinets...I haven't had one since a house we moved out of when I was FOUR! That was over two decades ago.
Quick! Better pass that candy dish around....
Hahaha, Jackson!
SunnyBlue, your inside/outside system is genius! I'm copying you, for sure.
I keep hearing the idea that storing meds in a bathroom is a bad idea. It's no warmer in there than anywhere else in my house, and all my meds (prescriptions and OC things like ibuprophen) come in sealed paastic containers that you could drop into the lake without getting anything wet. So how does that advice make sense? Just askin'.
I use very few products, keep those I do use mostly in a drawer in the bathroom, and the rest (bandaids, rarely needed items, etc.) are in the linen closet for general access.
I just want to share what my mom (an RN) just told me.
If you want to get rid of drugs, put some water in the container, and leave them for a few hours. The water will disintegrate the pills.
i LOVE the number of store brand/generic medications and vitamins. me too!
Great idea, meanderingchaos, especially antibiotics... There are not enough multiresistent bacteria in the world yet, so let's make a giant cocktail for the sewers, then wait a couple of years and, um, die.
as for meds, you can always do what Marge Simpson did- sell them at a garage sale to Otto and Snake.
LOL CATMAMA!!!!! YES!!!! :D
Thanks to all, for teaching me how to properly throw these expired pills away. Up until now, I've just been throwing then in the trash. Thanks to you, now I know better. I will still store them in the medicine cabinet, however. Simply because I live in a minuscule NYC apartment, and I am lucky enough to have a really huge medicine cabinet with lots of shelving inside. I cannot imagine what else I would use it for, and where else my pills would go. But hopefully they will be ok. Fingers crossed. :)