organize now challenge: the medicine cabinet.

I'll be honest: I was kind of surprised when I saw that the medicine cabinet was going to be a destination for the Organize Now! Challenge.

But then I opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom* adjacent to our kitchen and took a good, long look. What an enormous quantity of crap in a wretched tiny little space.

*This is not our main bathroom. That one is upstairs, and houses the tub and our laundry facilities. We don't actually have a medicine cabinet in that bathroom, just a linen closet and some shelves, and all of our stuff up there is pretty organized, so that'd be no fun for anyone.

did  you think i was going to remember
to take a messy photo? silly.

don't even ask how old that
contact solution is. really.

So. I emptied the lot of it into a super fancy box, and I sat myself down on the throne and proceeded to transfer a good 80% of it into the trash can. Jennifer says to start by pitching anything that's past the expiration date, unfinished antibiotics, old razors, and random nonprescription meds that you just don't use. 

why we don't have nice things, #593:
because kids can't operate antique
light fixtures

 Please note the bare light bulb to the left of the mirror. The light bulb used to be hidden by a lovely milk glass sphere, but it seems the short people did not appreciate the milk glass sphere. I found it shattered on the floor. Two days later, I found the sphere from the light on the right side of the shattered in the sink. No points were awarded that day

.

the finished product.

Et voila! On the top shelf, we have a few bottles of nail polish, some Angry Birds adhesive Bandages (they're technically not band-aids), and a bottle each of children's tylenol and children's advil.

Middle shelf, some essential oils and a bottle of naproxyn (that's generic talk for Aleve.) My neurologist has forbidden tylenol and ibuprofen for me, so we only have the naproxyn. Nobody's sad about this, because it works better and doesn't destroy your liver or give you rebound pain.

On the bottom shelf is The Mister's beard trimmer (yes, he does trim it once in a while), a little thingy of dental floss, an antique soap box, and some Winchester Gun Oil, which is likely there so The Mister can oil his beard trimmer. He wasn't home when I was cleaning, so I am waiting to dispose of it. There's also a mug holding a few tubes of ointments: arnica gel, neosporin-ish stuff, etc. Jennifer recommends putting loose items in zippy bags, but I know I will be fishing them out of the sink seventy-four times a week, and I'm just not into that.

Jennifer also suggests installing a magnetic strip on the inside of the medicine cabinet to store tweezers, scissors and nail clippers. GENIUS. Another excellent idea is to sort your medicine cabinet out once a year to control the clutter that will probably build up.

Want to see what the other participants are up to this week?
Jennifer Ford Berry
Linda 
Bonnie
Jennifer
Michelle

***Please forgive the whacked out photo placement. I messed with it until I had exhausted my supply of bad words, so it's just going to have to be what it is.