Organizing Meds & Cleaning Supplies

For a week or so I've been wanting to go through my cleaning supplies and medicines to make sure what I was storing was stuff we needed to keep. It hadn't been that long since I'd cleaned them both out, maybe 6months or so. But I was feeling like we needed to purge further.

Cleaning Supplies

I had made some of my cleaning supplies back when I cleaned them out last. I made an all-purpose cleaner for countertops, toilet bowl/seat and pee on the floor (hey, we're potty training!). I also made a window cleaner. I tried to make a wood furniture polish but the recipe I had I didn't like how it turned out, so I'm still using store bought.

I don't use store bought toilet cleaners, but dish soap. I'd read about using that through FlyLady. Cheap dish soap works just as well as any "toilet cleaner" and it's safe to use around Trey (no chemicals to inhale) and it's WAY cheaper. I also keep a bottle in the cabinet next to each toilet, not with the other cleaning supplies.

As for shower/tub cleaners I'd been using store bough scrub but wasn't liking that it was a chemical as well. So this week I switched to baking soda. Also safe and cheap.

So all that to say here is what's in my cleaning supply cabinet. Or rather my before pic. Sorry it's kind of dark back there!

Just like any roomy cabinet, things get put in the back and then forgot or you can't get to them. So I got baskets at Dollar Tree (love that everything really is only a dollar!)

My cute baskets and my Dymo labeler (love this thing!)

After sorting all the cleaning supplies, this is what isn't going back in the cabinet. I know it isn't much but it felt good to me to get it out of our home.

This is what is gettting shoved to the back. My big basket of deep cleaning supplies: carpet cleaner to use with my carpet cleaner! I wasn't ready to get rid of that yet. My big bottle of vinegar that I use to make my homemade cleaners and my supplies to make my homemade laundry soap. The towels in the middle are my shammies and the other basket holds my wood polish, stain oil, cutting board oil and silver polish.

I have a stack of white towels that my MIL bought me when we moved into this house. She's big on using them for everything and when she helped clean the house while we were trying to move it she bought me some. I love using them! She gets them in a big pack at Sam's. Not sure how much they are but they last me a long time! I use them for cleaning everything! So they got a basket of their own to keep them from falling over and so I can get to the stuff behind them.
The general cleaning holds, window cleaner, all-purpose cleaner, wood cleaner, canned air and any smelly spray.
I know I still have some chemical cleaners but rotating them out is a process and I'm constantly working on finding more natural replacements for them.

Medicine Drawer

Ok, this can be a personal kind of thing. At least showing pics of what I have and have thrown out. However I want to show how much I threw out and how I organized it. We have large drawers in our hallway and I use one to store our meds. It works really well and Trey can't get into it. The drawer is about 18x16 and about 9in deep.

Here's the before pic. 

This is all the meds pulled out on the changing table. Our changing table is tall and roomy so this was a great space for me to do this!
Like I said before, I'd gone through this around 6months ago and purged a TON of pain pills! David and I have both had surgery so we ended up with a boat load of pain pills. I don't like taking those so a bunch got flushed. I'd kept one bottle of heavy meds but this time I decided that we really had no need to keep them. We're down to just the basics. We had lots of duplicates with different outsides that I condensed down to one and some stuff we just weren't going to use or didn't use. I also had about 5 thermometers, mostly from baby showers (why does everyone give you a thermometer?). I kept 2, one mouth one and one forehead one.
I also had lots of boxes with the pills in the foil packages. I hate those! So, using empty bottles from the pills I flushed I used those to hold the boxed pills. I cleaned them out and made my own labels. These take up way less space and look neater. For bandaids I just put all those in a ziplock bag. They store flat which I like.
Here's the trash pile.

Here's the keep pile.
And here it is in the drawer.

I had some extra room on the right side that I could fit our ace bandage, corn bag and my essential oils. I hadn't been able to put the oils in the drawer before, so I really like this set up.
I didn't label the baskets because there wasn't a place to put the labels. So I put little labels on top of some of the bottles. Just enough to give an idea of where most items are.
I like this set up so far, but I have a feeling things will just get thrown back into those baskets eventually.

Ideally, I'd love to downsize this even further. I'm trying to get more essential oils to take care of most ailments and do away with the "drugs". I want to get better about putting good stuff in and on our bodies.