This is Clutter Awareness Week AND National Poison Prevention Week, and our bathroom cabinets are a common place for both clutter and potential poisons to be lurking!
This week, I challenge you to organize your bathroom drawers and cabinets, and since each of us has a bathroom, THIS MEANS YOU!
I am reading a book called “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo. The author admitted to being confused once when cleaning out bathroom drawers. She cleaned out one, and the next day went to clean out another, but mistook it for the first as the contents were so similar. I would agree. Most of us have the following items in some combination in our bathroom drawers or cabinets:
- Over the counter medications, current and expired
- Prescription medications, current and expired
- Current and expired toiletries like face lotions, deodorant, cosmetics, hair products
- Contacts, contact solution, eye glasses, eye washes
- Dust. Hair.
- Dental picks, old toothbrushes and floss
- Sample size toiletries; purchased, picked up via traveling or hotel stays, or received in the mail.
- Cleaning supplies, for ourselves or the bathroom
- Unattached single pills, with or without packaging
- Used disposable razors.
- Depending on your family composition, hair accessories, shaving supplies, 17 different shampoos, etc.
- Well, you get the picture.
And so much of this is Clutter and potentially dangerous. So, how do we tackle this project?
Carve out some time. But don’t let this project overwhelm you! Bathrooms are very manageable projects. Tackle it all at once, or a drawer or cabinet a day for 20 minutes, and the end result is still the same.
Get cooperation from the decision makers in your home. The other people in your home can help with the project, or you can box up their stuff as guide them through the decision making process. Talk to them about expiration dates, safety, and inventory control, just like I just did with you!
With each item, review if it is needed, used or loved. If it’s none of these, toss it!
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- So many of the items in a bathroom are intended to improve our lives, but using them improperly can have the opposite effect. Using expired or questionable items just to save a few dollars can be dangerous.
- Expired medications can change chemically, and deliver weak or unexpected results. And old razors or random Qtips? Ewwww!
- If you have no idea how old an item is, side with caution and purge it. Practice saying this with me: “Is using this worth the risk?”. (The answer of course is “No!”)
- The safety of you and your family is worth a few hours spent cleaning and a few dollars spent!
Once you get rid of the icky and / or dangerous stuff, Take some tips from Retail Inventory Management:
- Use the products you have on hand before you buy more
- Use the Use oldest items first
- Store similar items together so you can see what you have in “stock”
- Make a note of the items you need to have on hand, and do a quick inventory before you head to the grocery. Keep the list handy, and make this pre-shopping inventory step a habit.
So spend a little time this week, and get rid of those monsters lurking in the bathroom!