Organize the Medicine Cabinet Mess Quickly

Cleaning some areas of the home is more daunting than others. One of the most daunting areas – and one that people often avoid altogether – is the medicine cabinet. This task doesn’t have to overwhelm, however. With the six surefire tips below, you’ll soon have clean and organized medicine cabinet shelves and a tidy bathroom space.

1. Clean It Out: First, you’ll need to take everything out of the medicine cabinet and place it on a flat surface. This will allow you to look at everything and to evaluate what needs to be placed back in the medicine cabinet, what needs to be moved to another storage area, and what needs to be discarded all together.


2. Discard It! With everything in front of you, it’s time to do one of three tasks – throw out, move over and keep. Let’s take a look at what needs to be thrown out first. Throw out anything with an expiration date that has already passed. Toss items that have been opened but unused for quite awhile. So, for instance, open creams and ointments that haven’t been used in three months should be discarded, as they might have collected bacteria and become unhygienic. Similarly, toss items that you purchased on a whim but haven’t used in six months or more.


3. Move It! Sometimes, the medicine cabinet becomes the receiving ground for all sorts of interesting objects. Put the forks back into the kitchen, the toys back into your child’s room and the yarn back into the sewing kit in the bedroom. In addition to misplaced items, there are certain items that should not be stored in the medicine cabinet. While many people keep pharmaceutical products such as medications in the medicine cabinet, this is actually not a great place for it. Changes in humidity and temperature can make pills decompose, and these items should be placed elsewhere. Similarly, if children can reach your medicine cabinet, make sure that it doesn’t contain dangerous and toxic items such as cleaning products, Ipecac or other similar items.


4. Keep! Now that you’ve thrown certain items out and moved others, it’s time to figure out what does belong here. The medicine cabinet shelves are the right place to store beauty products, emergency products (such as ointments, bandages, etc.), hair products, and First Aid supplies. There are a number of ways to organize the items that do belong in the medicine cabinet. You can designate that each medicine cabinet shelf has a specific type of supplies on it and place only those items there. You might even want to place a sticker on the shelf to indicate which items go there. Or, you could purchase narrow plastic bins and place all like-objects in one bin. Items that are very useful to have in the medicine cabinet include: sunscreen, aloe vera for burns, insect repellant, insect bite relief, heating and cooling packs, allergy medications, updated First Aid Kit, and hair and grooming products.


5. Clean It Up: Now, before placing everything back onto its designated shelf, take this opportunity to clean the medicine cabinet. Clean each shelf with a disinfectant and line each shelf with paper towels to absorb spills. Make sure that the bathroom medicine cabinet is completely clean and ready for the supplies to be placed there.
   
   
   
6. Putting It All Back: Now, you are ready to place all of your supplies back on the medicine cabinet shelves. While putting your supplies away, make sure to put messy oils and creams in plastic bags or bins so that they won’t leak. Place small items like hair accessories in Ziploc bags or in small containers. Label bins if you are using them, or label the shelves and place only like-minded items on each shelf. Viola! Your medicine cabinet is cleaned, organized, and ready for use.

Repeat this process every six months and try, in the interim, to keep the medicine cabinet clean as you go. Discard medicines as they expire, rather than waiting for a large cleaning; purchase supplies as they run out; and keep objects that don’t belong in the medicine cabinet out of it and in their designated place. While cleaning does take a bit of time – the rewards are definitely worthwhile. You’ll be proud of your job well done, and will enjoy how tidy and useful the medicine cabinet is after the cleaning process.