Spring Cleaning

Around this time of year Moms around the country are starting their "Spring Cleaning." Most of the time when I think of Spring Cleaning I think of heavy vacuuming/mopping, intense window cleaning, cleaning out closets and putting away winter clothes. One thing I hadn't thought of until recently was cleaning out our medicine cabinet.

Last night I opened out medicine cabinet and it was in total disarray. There were items everywhere and they were in no particular order or in any form of organization. I felt the need to fix it and decided to add it to my "To Do List" for Spring Cleaning. As I pulled bottles and boxes of medication out of the cabinet I couldn't help notice how many items were expired. About 2/3 of everything we had were expired and I hate to admit this but the oldest had expired in 2008. I threw away everything from prescriptions to over the counter medications like Caladryl.

I realized that we had most likely taken some of the expired medications in the past and decided to look up possible effects. I found an interesting article on Helium.com that described the dangers of taking expired medications, you can check it out here. I also found an interesting article on the Harvard website, that gave some interesting information as well, which can be found here.

Based on the information I read from the Helium.com article and the Harvard article, I've decided to keep the "Medicine Cabinet" on my PERMANENT Spring Cleaning "To Do List"! I know that most of the medications were probably still okay, especially the ones that just recently expired, but why risk my family's health if they weren't? Better to be safe than sorry!

What items are on your Spring Cleaning "To Do List"?