Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Get rid of old medicine!

I have a bad habit. A habit of holding on to medicine for WAY too long. Prescription medicine and over the counter medicine. So this entry on the organizational counter was MADE for me. But - first things first - how DO you get rid of medicine? Depending on the type of drug it can either be
1. Tossed in the trash
2. Flushed down the toilet
3. Given to a "take-back" program for recycling and / or safe disposal

If you are tossing them in the trash, what you should do is remove them from the original containers. You want to pour liquid medicines into some kitty litter to absorb the liquid, and you want to crush the pills and mix them with kitty litter or coffee grounds or something else to make them more undesirable.

It looks like drug take-backs are usually in October and April, so I will tuck away my unused medicine that can't be flushed into a box, and am marking it on my calendar.

Remember my picture showing the master bathroom?
 Down in the corner you can see the plastic drawers where we keep all the medicine. We need to come up with a better system eventually, but it works for now.
So, when I went through them, I found lots of expired items, lots of prescriptions that were very old. Overall I was able to pull out all this stuff to dispose of:
See that big bottle? Apparently I have a huge bottle of oxycodine from when I had my first son. wow. I'm trying to remember if I was walking around high for the first week. The bottle is still mostly full - I do remember deciding to just stop taking it and relying on the motrin alone. They did not give me anything nearly as strong with kid #2.

Have you gone through your medicine recently? How much were you able to get rid of?





HookingupwithHoH


Photobucket

2 comments:

  1. I just got rid of some old medicine a couple of weeks ago. I just flushed it down the toilet. Sure cleared up some space in my medicine cabinet. I found your post from a link party. Sounds like we are both on a getting organized kick. I've also started a blog about it at:
    www.controllingcraziness.blogspot.com
    Good luck organizing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I saw your link on someday crafts and realized that I really need to get rid of a few bottles. www.watchoutforthewoestmans.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete