Organization Challenge Day 3

It’s Day 3 already! If you’ve missed the first couple days, no worries. You can access the master list of all the challenges in this post here.

If you aren’t already signed up for this challenge, you can do so here: http://eepurl.com/EkqPz

It’s completely free to join and some advantages of being part of the email “group” is that you’ll be first to get notified of the new challenges, printables and there will be some bonus tips that will be in your emails only.

Today we will be working on the bathroom medicine cabinet. I think this is something we all tend to put off or forget about. I put together a handy sheet that you can print off which lists the expiry time lines for common products we all have in our bathrooms.

First off, get your trash can handy cause you will be throwing some stuff away today. Clear your bathroom counter top off and move everything out onto it from your medicine cabinet. (you can also do this with the other drawers/cupboards in your bathroom if you have the time today).  Now quickly wipe down the shelves in your cabinet so it’s nice and clean 🙂

Start with all the prescription medicines. Check the dates first, they should all have a very visible expiry date on them. Toss everything that is already beyond the date. If you come across a bottle with no label and you have no clue what it is, toss it.

Next let’s go to creams/lotions/oils/cosmetics, etc. I know it’s hard to get rid of them. I used to hang onto absolutely everything – for years! But now, due to having a limited amount of space, I go by this rule: if I haven’t used it in the last year, I toss it. Or if it is beyond the expiry date, it gets tossed. A lot of items don’t even have a date on them, so you might have to do your best on remembering when it was you opened it for the first time. I suggest from now on when you open a new product, that you write the date on the bottom of it with a black permanent marker. This way you will know exactly how old it is. When you are using products on your face and around your eyes, you really want to be careful. Bacteria build up in these products can lead to infections which are not fun at all.

Typically these are the expiry times for them:

Download a printable copy of this sheet here. This is a great thing to keep handy as a reference.

Once you have purged all your old products, replace the others in your newly cleaned cabinet and I bet you will have a lot more space in there 🙂

Edited to add: One of our challenge participants just brought up a very good (and important) thing to remember: If you are throwing away medications, please do not ever flush them down the toilet. This can cause many problems once it gets into our water systems and does awful things to our eco system. Please dispose of your medications properly – there are agencies out there to help you do this.