Day 30 of the Decluttering Challenge: Medicines
Welcome to the very last day of the Thirty Day Decluttering Challenge!
We made it to the end! And for the very last day, we are decluttering our medicine stash.
This is ending just in time for us to all celebrate Christmas. I would say “relax and celebrate Christmas,” but who gets to do that until the whole thing is officially over? Christmas is joyous and beautiful and also completely exhausting and overwhelming. At least, that is how I feel about it. Maybe we are doing it wrong!
It does feel like a special gift to myself that I have done all this decluttering right in time for Christmas vacation.
I hope you are able to enjoy that too.
Let’s dive right in to our last quest: medicines. What exactly should we focus on decluttering in our medicine cabinets?
My husband’s mom, Donna, is a disaster preparedness expert. You can get some expert tips on her about prepping in general in this article I wrote with her.
One of Donna’s tips is to keep a stock of medicines and to always keep your medicines filled. Hold on to medicines you are not using, even past the expiration dates. If a major disaster happened, like a war, or a terrorist attack, we may lose all ability to purchase medications. Think how detrimental that would be.
That is one reason we have so many. We are trying to keep prepared.
You can Google any medicine you own online to see if it is safe to use past its expiration date.
We recently ran out of Abreva and only had a very outdated tube. When we searched it up online, we learned that the product turns after its expiration date and is actually harmful to use if it is old. So it is important to check these older meds before using them. Some of them do need to be thrown away once they are expired, for sure.
Medicines can be easy to decide whether to toss or not. If they are yucky, have turned colors, are leaking, etc., it is easy to throw them away!
If you are able to group them by uses, that is extremely helpful. There is nothing worse than desperately needing a bandage and not being able to find them in a bottomless bin of random medications.
I have an entertaining and helpful assistant, my son JD, with me today on the video. He makes it more fun to watch!
Come join us in cleaning out our medicine bins. You could play the video in the background as you go through your own stash of medicines.
If you need the 30 Day Challenge list, you can reference or print it out below:
Want to start at the beginning or jump to a different day of the 30 Day Decluttering Challenge? Click here to visit the into, with links to each day of the challenge.
Happy decluttering and happy holidays!
