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A standard fixture in mid-20th-century bogs, our medication cupboard held on the wall above the sink. It was a really skinny, steel cupboard with a few glass cabinets and a mirror-covered door in entrance. While we didn’t retailer a lot drugs in it, Dad used that mirror for shaving and all of us brushed our tooth in entrance of it.
While cleansing out my rest room cupboards not too long ago, it occurred to me that I’ve much more drugs now than we had in these days. Inside my mother and father’ tiny drugs cupboard, we stored just some fundamental objects: aspirin, a tube of toothpaste, a tin field of band-aids, Dad’s razor, and a small bottle of Mercurochrome for cuts and scratches. The area was too small to carry Dad’s Old Spice shaving mug or a bottle of Listerine, so we saved these some place else.
All of the opposite objects we used to treatment our ills had been discovered within the kitchen. There was ginger ale and soda crackers for nausea. And Grandma Jennie believed in ingesting boiled water with lemon slices for nearly every thing from complications to tummy upsets and congestion.
We by no means apprehensive about medicines expiring in these days. We merely changed them when the bottle was empty. But these days after I open a brand new treatment, I write the date on the label in order that I do know when I’ve stored it too lengthy. I’ll do some web analysis or seek the advice of my pharmacist for assist deciding how lengthy to maintain completely different drugs.
When I get rid of expired capsules and medicine, I by no means flush them down the drain. Water remedy crops cannot filter out all medications, so they might contaminate our ingesting water and hurt wildlife. A greater resolution is to interrupt them up as small as attainable, combine them with espresso grounds in a sealable container, and throw it out with the trash. But even higher is to drop off unused medicine at a Prescription Drug Take Back Day assortment web site or drug disposal box for secure disposal.
Today, I don’t have a drugs cupboard however I do preserve fundamental provides like Tylenol, allergy tablets, sunscreen, and band-aids in my first-aid equipment. And whereas I can’t forego prescription drugs; at any time when attainable, I want to depend on natural home remedies like Grandma’s scorching water and lemon.
Feature picture courtesy of Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0, by way of Wikimedia Commons