One area that tends to get cluttered very quickly is the Bathroom Medicine Cabinet. Since it's such a small area, it is a good one to work on decluttering when you only have an hour or two. ⠀⠀

Here is a quick DIY to tidying up the medicine cabinet:

Have a trash bag, donation box & bag for recycling handy.
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1. Empty the contents of the cabinet and sort them into categories:

·         Medicine- Separate by type- Prescription, Stomach, Pain, Allergy, Cold/Flu. Keep children’s medication separate from adults.

·         First Aid-, Group into like categories: bandages, ice packs, gauze & wraps, tape, disinfectant sprays, and creams, burn cream, wound sterilization creams, etc.

·         Cosmetics- Pull everything out, toss anything that is old or expired (yes makeup expires!). Remove items you bought but don’t like or use. Wipe out the bag. Clean your brushes and then refill the bag with just your makeup favs!

·         Hair Products- Just like with makeup- throw out anything that is old, dried up, or past its time. Any hair product you didn’t like – remove and donate if full. Hair tools- if you use them great! If not, let them go.

·         Teeth- Pull out toothbrushes- toss and change them out if it’s time to do so. Wipe down the toothbrush holder. Survey your inventory, how many extra brushes, floss & mouthwash do you have?  Keep it all together in one place so you can refill your travel bag or cabinet as needed. Try not to buy more until your extras have been used up.

·         Miscellaneous- continue the same steps with any other categories of products you have in your medicine cabinet until it is completely empty

2.   Wipe down the shelves – it’s always a good practice to clean your shelves anytime you empty them, that way you aren’t putting items back onto sticky or dirty shelves.

3. Medication:  Check expiration dates - safely dispose of any medication that is outdated or just looks like it's no longer good. Check with your town - most towns have places you can drop off medication to be disposed of.  Store Adult Medication and Children’s Medication Separately. You don’t want to mix them up by accident and have a major problem on your hands.

4. Put everything back!  Store items in the cabinet that you use most often. Keep your most-used products front and center. Try and keep the like items together. That way you will always know how much inventory you have and will avoid buying duplicates.

That’s it! A tidy and functional medicine cabinet in just 4 easy steps.  A rule of thumb that I like to follow is it tell myself that my home does not need to be a pharmacy. We can keep the extras at the store and go buy things when we need them. This mindset has helped me stop stocking up on stuff just because it’s a good deal or because we might need it someday. I can’t tell you how many products I had to toss because they expired, and we never ended up needing them.