Howdy sweet friends-o-mine!! Thanks for stopping by for this month’s Where Bloggers Live 05.2023: What’s a Medicine Cabinet? This month finds us sharing a look into our medicine cabinets. We have 3 bathrooms but only 2 medicine cabinets. And we had to fight to get those. Allow me to explain…
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Where Bloggers Live 05.2023
Maybe you remember that I am in the midst of spring cleaning as per my seasonal goals, here. I have made great headway, knocking out the den, kitchen, downstairs bath, closet under the stairs, living and dining rooms, upstairs guest bedroom, linen closet and have begun sorting through all the stuff in the office. Yay me!! Look at me go!!
When I went through the filing cabinet yesterday, I came across the paperwork and change orders for when our house was being built in 2008. We made a list of things we had seen in the model home that hadn’t been included in the construction of our actual house. Topping the list were missing medicine cabinets from each of the three bathrooms.
MIA Medicine Cabinets
We asked the builder where our medicine cabinets were. He didn’t seen to understand what medicine cabinets were. And didn’t realize that bathrooms in the model home for our floor plan had included medicine cabinets. We visited the model home and took photos of the medicine cabinets or the gabinete farmacéutico as they are called in Spanish. Then showed the photos to the builder.
“Ohhh, those,” he said.
Or something like that. Then he went on to explain that no one uses medicine cabinets anymore.
“WRONG!!” we told him.
And with a little pressure, we managed to talk him into giving us our medicine cabinets. At least 2 of them. He explained that the way the walls in the master bedroom were built, they would not accommodate medicine cabinets. Hmmm. But in the immortal words of Meatloaf…
2 out of 3 ain’t bad.
Gabinete Farmacéutico Numero Uno
This medicine cabinet is in the downstairs bathroom. It is the bathroom we use most. And the bathroom visitors (what visitors?) and overnight guests (family) use. But when we first moved into our home, it was Lauren’s bathroom. This medicine cabinet is chock full of stuff. The medicine we might need but might be too lazy to go upstairs to our bathroom to get…you know, like allergy meds, Tylenol, Aleve, liquid bandage.
Top Shelf
The prescription shelf. And I keep some children’s Tylenol for the babies. There’s that jar of generic Vicks, too. Allergy meds. Pain meds. Stuff for back problems and muscle spasms. We neither one take anything for long. But PC has had some serious back issues. And I have had 2 neck surgeries. Some of these prescriptions are leftovers from those days.
Middle Shelf
The OTC shelf. Leftover hand sanitizer from the Covid days. Lots of different pain relievers for PC. I never take anything but really don’t have a lot of pain..except my neck. Have learned to just ignore it for the most part. Saline nose spray for our guests whose nasal passages become miserably dry when visiting us in El Paso. Vitamin C or Airborne. And Nexium. For poor PC’s acid reflux.
Bottom Shelf
Assorted paraphernalia. Nightlight for guests. Razors and extra blades for guests. Nail clippers…for guests. Body spray for PC when he has forgotten to use it after his shower. Saves a trip back upstairs. Digital thermometer for babies. And thermometer strips for infants. I have a basket full of toiletries for guests but it is too big to fit in the medicine cabinet. And I like having it out and visible so they can find that toothbrush, or mouthwash or deodorant they may have forgotten to pack.
Gabinete Farmacéutico Numero Dos
Not much to see here. Almost makes me wonder if we really needed a medicine cabinet in this upstairs guest bathroom after all. But when Matt lived here, it wasn’t quite as empty. The shelves are so short that I can’t keep hair products like detangler for the girls in here.
Nothing to see on the top shelf. Two children’s toothbrushes on the middle shelf for Cia and Cam. And PC’s electric razor on the bottom shelf. I don’t like having it sit out on our bathroom counter so it has been relegated to the guest bathroom. Haven’t started the spring cleaning in here so the bathroom looks like this. Will be working in here tomorrow. Maybe I will find something else to put in the medicine cabinet.
The Gabinete Farmacéutico-less Bathroom
As I said, our bathroom is the one without the medicine cabinet. We have drawers instead. Which work okay but I have to kind of lay things down in them to make things fit.
Top drawer has my make-up – what little there is of that.
Second drawer has Q-tips, our blood pressure machine, oxygen meter, and a collection of seldom used hairbrushes. Make-up applicators for the make-up I don’t wear.
Third drawer down. Isn’t that the name of a rock group? Front left, nail polish I don’t wear. Front right, essential oils I do wear. Toothpaste, razor blades. Pain meds for the month-long UTI I had in March and April.
Fourth drawer. Electric toothbrush heads. Bandages, gauze. More thermometers. More allergy meds. False eyelashes that look ridiculous on me.
I really dislike the way these drawers look. Would welcome suggestions for storing all of this stuff. Maybe I need to move the medicine into the medicine cabinet in the other upstairs bathroom? Just all looks so messy. When I get to this room for spring cleaning, I need to have a come to Jesus and toss a whole lot of this stuff out. Who am I fooling with those false eyelashes??
Disposing of Unused Medicine
When I cleaned the downstairs medicine cabinet a few weeks ago, I discovered a number of bottles of prescribed medicine that had expired. I loaded it up and took it to Walgreen’s. The first store I visited didn’t have a drug disposal safe. The second store I visited had a safe but it was full and they weren’t accepting any more medication. I drove around with our expired prescriptions for a week. Then I asked Lauren what she did with their expired medicine. She sent me a link to this article. I liked this idea as it was something I could easily do.
Remove the drugs from their original containers and mix them with something undesirable, such as used coffee grounds, dirt, or cat litter. This makes the medicine less appealing to children and pets and unrecognizable to someone who might intentionally go through the trash looking for drugs.
Problem solved. Here are some additional suggestions, if you are wondering what to do with your unused, expired medicine.
Where Bloggers Live
Ever wonder where the ideas for this series come from? Well, let me tell you!! Each month our fearless leader Bettye comes up with a prompt for the gang to respond to. This has been one of my favorite series in which to participate and I hope to continue to join these fun-loving ladies for more thoughtful posts.
If you missed last month’s post, you might check it out. We shared a day in my life, weekend edition. And before that, our favorite website. Mine is PINTEREST…are we friends on Pinterest yet? I just love it!!
Your Turn
Scared to say anything but my blog has been cooperative this month. Wonders never cease. Not only can I save posts right now as I work on them but BONUS – I can publish them when I am finished!! Makes blogging ever so much more successful.
Hope you will join me in stopping by to discover the secrets stowed inside my Where Bloggers Live girlfriends’ medicine cabinets. Shall we all pop in on their blogs together?
Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Sally at Within a World of My Own
Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After
Hope you have a restful weekend. This will be PC’s last baseball game for a bit. But his surgery was pushed back to the first week of June. We are going to have a colossal yard sale on Memorial Day weekend and get rid of all the extra stuff I have cleaned out of every nook and cranny this spring. Now to get the rest of the house cleaned up before then.
Thank you for coming round today. I appreciate your visit!
Hugs and kisses,
No one uses those anymore?? Well, Sally and Em would agree, haha. But we actually bought one for my vanity area because those drawers were NOT enough, haha.
But as Kathrine said, mine is a skincare cabinet in all reality.
Drawers can be hard because you only see the tops of things. For some things that’s fine, but for other things it’s hard (for instance, I painted the top of my fingernail polishes with a dab of its color to know which bottle was which.)
OXOX
Jodie
Interesting! Every year I go through our medicines and get rid of the ‘just in case I need it’ ones that have gone out of date. We have one cabinet above the sink in our en suite but it’s so shallow, it doesn’t hold much. I have a small unit in our bathroom which has 4 wicker baskets in it that hold things like paracetamol, plasters, shaving foam etc. Other than that things are kept (untidily) in the below sink cupboard in the ensuite – now you have shamed me into thinking that I need to find a better way of storage under there rather than just throw it in, close the door quickly and hope for the best 😉
By my standards, your drawers look organized and neat. No doubt when you do your clean out of stuff you don’t use, it’ll be easier to re-organize what you have. Your drawers don’t look overstuffed, so I think there’s a good chance you will be able to make it work. The builder’s “nobody uses those anymore” did give me a laugh because I’d thought the same thing! 😀
I have heard you’re not really supposed to keep medicine in the bathroom because of the shower steam, but I do anyway!
Yeah, I don’t keep meds in the medicine cabinet because its really inconvenient. We have a container in our kitchen cabinet. I love seeing how other people organize their stuff.
It is fun to see how others organize. And to get tips about trying new things in our own homes.