My current Tidying Project is moving all the stuff from the old bureau we hate into the new (used) bureau I bought this weekend. No big deal, since they have the same number of drawers and are the same basic size. EXCEPT—bureaus have a horizontal surface, and in my house, horizontal surfaces get built on vertically to their toppling points. So I have to deal with a large heap of dusty stuff, some of which belongs there (jewelry box, little dish of Mysterious Parts that look familiar and we know we’ll be saying “Oh THAT’s what that was!” when we’re looking for it a month later) and some of which doesn’t (medicine dropper used for glow-in-the-dark paint, doll pantaloons), and that’s going to take some time.
In the meantime I’m working on the drawers, and it turns out that if you want to come to my house to rob me of the three Percocet left over from my 2005 c-section, or the bottles of USELESS Demerol the OB prescribed in 2005 and 2007 when it turned out I was allergic to the Percocet, you should look in my underwear drawer. That’s also where you should look for the remaining pills from The Failed Psychiatric Medication Experiment of 2002 (six bottles, some duplicates, each with a few pills). There are several more bottles, too—I haven’t dug all the way to the bottom yet, but I know there are more beneath the Underwear That Fit in 2006 But Not Now. Betcha next I find the Tylenol 3 that made me queasy in 2001.
Listen, I KNOW I should be getting rid of these. I ALREADY KNOW IT TO BE TRUE. And yet I keep them. What if I ever had another c-section and I needed more than the prescribed day and a half’s worth of pain medication that didn’t work? What if there were an apocalyptic world event and I was really anxious/depressed and other marauders got to the pharmacies first?
Speaking of pharmacies, I used to work in one, and the two pharmacists I worked with had dramatically different opinions about expired medications. One said he would never give his own family expired medication, so he always told everyone else to get rid of it too; the other pharmacist said, essentially, piffle.
My mom, too, is a medication hoarder: half of an antibiotics prescription that was left over when the doctor switched her to another, and so on. My dad gets rid of medications immediately, either when the doctor tells him to stop taking it or, if it’s over-the-counter, when it expires. Periodically he goes through the medicine cabinet just to be sure everything’s necessary and up-to-date. I only recently got rid of antihistamines with a 2003 expiration date. It was a bottle of 100 and I’d only used a dozen or so! I didn’t want to have to re-buy them!
Anyway, this is what I want to know today: Are you a medication pitcher? or are you a medication hoarder?
Pitcher, married to a Hoarder. There are other areas where the opposite is true, or (horrors) where we are BOTH hoarders. When pack rats breed….
[My word verification is “ovens.” They’re running out of letter combinations, aren’t they?]
I’m a pitcher. I don’t want any nasty side affects of a medication that’s gone bad. Also, with all of the old and out dated meds, I can’t find the ones that are actually useful! So, if I don’t need it, out it goes. With the exception of some prescription butt paste that I got for Anna when she was a baby. That stuff is expensive!
I’m a hoarder and a re-user. You never know…
Also, the expiration date – total piffle says the drug reps that used to come into the docs office I used to work at. I firmly believe that, if anything, they just reduce in potency.
I’m a hoarder that occassionally goes nuts pitching. Meaning I’ll have stuff for years and then I’ll suddenly realize I haven’t taken x in years and so I’ll go through everything and pitch what is old or clearly not used. I usually give it a year beyond expiration before I pitch.
But! The hoarding has saved me a couple of times when my asthma inhaler ran out and I found an old one that had like two puffs left in it. So then I was very, very glad I am scatterbrained and saving all those two dose inhalers.
Pitcher if it’s boring stuff–ointment, antibiotics. TOTAL HOARDER if it’s good stuff–Percocet, Vicoden, any of your good pain meds!! Wait, did I just say that?? Should I be worried?
i’m a hoarder but i’m also the only one who will ever take the time to pitch so i do it like you are…wait until a cleaning frenzy strikes and throw away anything that isn’t absolutely necessary (but even then i keep the stuff that is only a little bit expired!).
I do this same thing. I rarely take pain medication when it’s prescribed but I always keep it in case one day I somehow am in a crazy amount of pain and my new prescription doesn’t cut it. I realize there are some serious holes in my logic but there you go. A brief look inside my thought process. My WACKED-OUT BUT NOT ON PAIN KILLERS THOUGHT PROCESS!
Hoarder. I refill my asthma prescription before I’m out, then won’t use the old one up, so I have inhalers two years old in my closet. Jason still has some Percocet from three years ago that he hasn’t thrown away yet. I’m not sure why he’s holding onto it.
I am a pitcher of medication but a hoarder in many other areas, hmm, not sure why that is. Medicine related, my in-laws have a jar of Vaseline in their medicine cabinet that they have had since my husband was a baby. He just turned 37. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww. I wouldn’t touch that stuff with a ten foot pole.
PITCHER. Slowly converting DH to pitcher as well. Our small house can only hold so much so why hold on to expired meds? Although I will ‘fess up to keeping Prednisone – my doc doesn’t like to prescribe it and it works so quickly. Oh, well…
Antibiotics I pitch.
Expired? pitch.
Pain medication – save until expired, just in case it’s needed again.
My dh doesn’t really throw anything away… he thinks expired meds are FINE and he hates to throw out anything. I do it while he’s at work, especially considering he never actually takes any medication.
I’m a Hoarder, until either I:
a) can’t stand it anymore
b) run out of room in the medicine cabinet.
Just this past weekend, I eliminated 2/3 of our medicine cabinets, simply by flushing the meds we no longer use, or the ones that were (severely) expired.
We have never had any hard core pain meds in the house. I guess we should be thankful of that – that we’ve never needed them. Anyway, you should totally start a side business – it could pay for some Target habit!
Pitcher, I hate clutter and some antibiotics such as Minocin can be very dangerous if taken when expired…I toss everything.
I pitch any expired liquids (cough medicine, etc.) and Tylenol (which, if expired, can actually harm you). I will use expired antibiotics, Advil, etc. Remember to take medication you want to throw out to the pharmacy where it can be properly disposed of, by incineration.
Pitcher of antibiotics, anything I can’t remember what it was for, or anything along those lines. Asthma inhalers, pain meds, I’m a complete hoarder. OTC stuff doesn’t usually last long enough to expire since the only stuff we buy is analgesics and generic Zyrtec.
I pitch expired meds! But I have never had a c-section or surgery, so yeah. Maybe I would hoard meds.
Funny – I linked to you today because your de-cluttering posts crack me up. And as if on cue, you posted this one today. Heh.
We pretty much burn through OTC stuff. I pitch things we’ll never use, either because they didn’t work or because the flavoring offended DD too much to ask for a battle when I could just re-buy.
I toss failed prescription stuff of every stripe, but if it’s pain med that worked, I don’t hoard it I RETAIN IT. I’ve got some 4 year old Vicodin and 3 year old muscle relaxer. I also freak out a little every time I see the PSA on the boy who got this for his hysterectomy.
I really should pitch the Vicodin but then I think WHAT IF. I hate to have to go in and ask for some and be looked at like a drug seeker, or worse yet get told to work my way through the OTC aisle starting with Tylenol.
I find it easy to purge any other bathroom item, although I will give products a little time in the under-sink holding pen just in case I want to give them a second chance. They keep the failed makeup company until I am ready to reclaim the space.
Hoarder for prescription pain meds, tosser for everything else… but I never TAKE the old pain meds, so I don’t know why I keep them…
I throw everything out. Oh, except the childbirth-related Percocet. Thought I might get a good deal on some mysterious black market. But the other day I was going through the cabinets and found a stash of my husband’s allergy and Weird Skin Issue medication, dating back to COLLEGE. Which, if you must know, was a LONG TIME AGO. I am so embarrassed. I mean, do I ever LOOK in the cabinets? Apparently not.
I hoard, but I never realized it until just now. I have a million half-used bottles of different doses of Synthroid in my nightstand drawer from back when my endocrinologist was still trying to get my dose right and would often change my prescription before I’d finished my previous bottle. But that actually came in handy a couple times when I didn’t fill my prescription in time and I could take one 50 and one 75, say, if I was out of the 125 pills. Also I still have Percocet and Vicodin from my two surgeries, mostly because I wasn’t sure if there was some sort of Procedure to throwing away controlled substances. Even though now that I say that it sounds really dumb.
hoarder!
I guess I’m sentimental because I hold onto prescription meds and sometimes OTC stuff…and (even worse) I often keep the empty containers so I know what to buy–or request–again.
Hoarder and proud of it. It has come in handy so many times. But mostly I just hoard pain medication and antibiotics, because those you can really, really need and not have access to them on an immediate basis. I can’t even tell you how many times I have been glad I still have the leftover eyedrops from last time one of us got pinkeye, or how happy I was to have saved that percocet when my husband had to have mnor sugery and the pharmacy accidentally screwed up his pain medication RX.
I do go through and pitch anything that expired at least once or twice a year, and I do pitch things that I cannot see any potential use for ever again.
I hoard the prescriptions, and am more ‘meh’ on the otc stuff. I’ll toss it if I HAPPEN TO NOTICE that it’s expired, but I don’t, say, go through my medicine cabinet to cull out the old stuff.
HOARDER. I have SUCH a problem. I cannot buy another bottle of Ibuprofin because that GIGANTIC bottle (which I thought was wise to purchase back in 2003) still has pills in it even though they expired in 2004.
And pain or anxiety meds are the HARDEST to pitch. Because it is such a hassle to get them. And when you need them, you generally cannot deal with HASSELS.
But I’ve also saved samples from the pediatrician’s office: pinkeye drops when I was CERTAIN the other child would catch it too so the nurse hooked me up; tons of ear drops and ear-infection antibiotics that have accumulated since we’ve been down that road several dozen times; mylicon drops that I’m sure are good for NOTHING but they’re pricey and it might make me feel better to give a fussy baby SOMETHING when I’m at the end of my rope at 2am…
pitcher… married to a hoarder…. daughter in law to a doctor. If I wasn’t a pitcher we’d have samples coming out our asses. Too bad I couldn’t sell some of it he he he. The good stuff, we used. The rest, no one wanted. And there was sooo much of it that I’d just pitch expired stuff even though I knew it was probably fine… it was just my way of thinning the herd.
antibiotics I toss. Skin creams I’ve saved, and I’m glad because both of my boys have had eczema issues and that stuff is expensive. I saved prednisone, but ended up tossing it when my dr insisted I re-fill the prescription. And there is at least one abx that is fatal if expired, so I always toss those but most others just lose potency if anything at all. So OTC pain relievers I save… until they are embarrassingly old. Like “expired 5 years ago” or “wasn’t this recalled due to cyanide??” :)
I have a hard time throwing out anything I paid for, meds or otherwise. Leftover pain pills have been sanity-saving for us.
Pitcher, no doubt about it. I have an innate distrust (nontrust? mistrust? whatever.) of medications as it is – there’s no way in hell I would ever keep anything that wasn’t (a) in use, or (b) within it’s expiration time range. Better safe than sorry.
Definitely a Pitcher! I pitch expired food also. If I don’t, in the back of my mind I think “What if someone gets sick/dies from taking/eating/drinking this?” Not worth it to me!
Lazy pitcher. So much so that I would seem a hoarder. I do not keep anything for any other particular reason except laziness.
Pitcher. We keep the “good stuff” (ha) until we notice it has expired, then out it goes!
I’m a big purging dork.
Hoarder, all the way. For the same reasons you said. What if I need percocet again? And over the counter stuff can be pricey. I really don’t think expiration dates mean much.
I’m a tweener, married to a hoarder. Like percocet left over from surgery should be kept for when you wrench your back or break a toe in the middle of a holiday weekend, when a trip to the ER would be tantamount to suicide. Old vitamins and allergy pills: out they go!
Hoarder, at least of the good stuff (leftover painkillers from c/s)
Oh, I’m a Pitcher, totally. I love to clean out cabinets and throw things away, so whenever I come upon some expired medication it’s kind of a thrill, because now that little bit of space will be free!
Also, I am sort of a compulsive rule-follower, and I figure the expiration date is sort of a rule, so if it’s on or after that date, out it goes (same with food — in fact, I won’t even open a yogurt if it’s expiring that day; I’ll pitch it right in the trash).
I hoard drops/cream for conjunctivitis because damnit if my children do not find a way to get this every couple weeks. I also hoard good pain medication (Percocet) and stuff that may be useful with an acute problem. I throw away anything that’s expired, prescription or OTC, if it doesn’t meet one of those requirements.
I actually once had an expired bottle of pain meds, though, that, when I opened them, smelled like someone had unleashed some kind of Death of A Thousand Years. The pills were black. It was only a few months past expiration, but it was CLEARLY bad. I don’t think you could mistake that.
Just a thought to throw out there. I’m an emergency medicine physician. I see a lot of kids who have gotten into pill bottles. child proof top my ass..please for the love of god toss prescriptions you’re not using or at least get them put away where they can’t get them. (and you’d be surprised how much they can get into, even when you think they can’t reach. Trust me, they can reach) A lot of times no one can tell me how many pills were left in the bottle, or better yet, which ones they could have gotten into. Nothing’s worse than trying to feed a toddler activated charcoal to block the absorption of pills. It’s messy and it sucks. Luckily at that age they don’t usually take enough to cause significant harm but it’s not a given.
Pitcher.
If I need meds, I want to know that they’re going to work.
Typically there are never any additional side effects of taking expired meds- aside from less of a chance of it working because it will lose effectiveness over time.
hoarder. love having meds on hand! I agree, what if there were an appocolyptic event and a plane crashed into your neighbors house and that percocet was the only thing keeping Mrs. Smith from her pain?
LOL!!!
I keep the stuff for an inordinately long time and then I pitch it. Esp. pain killers since we tend to be twisters, breakers etc in this house.
Hoarders by default. We don’t hoard deliberately. We’re just really lazy housekeepers and things that are not in sight, anything in a closet or a drawer, will go years without being cleared out. We’ll go looking for Immodium AD and realize it expired in 2003 & instead of throwing it away right then we put it back on the shelf because otherwise we’d have to leave the hall to find a trash can and then come back to the cupboard to look for other meds.
I think I’m hoarder by upbringing b/c my mom is ridiculous. (I was just home in July and she was using wart remover on my cousin that had expired in 1998)
However, I live w/ a pitcher, so I think I’m at a happy medium now. Stuff that is harder to come by, or I know I’d have to go to the dr. for I tend to hoard, but not until it’s like.. crusty level. Then, OTC stuff I’m cool w/ tossing a few months after it’s expired b/c I know the stores have more I can go get easily.
Pitcher.
Unless it’s something good. Like pain meds. Then I usually get it refilled, even if I don’t need it, just so I have it on hand. However, those usually last just up to the expiration date.
Otherwise, it’s all thrown out. I, too, periodically go through all our meds (otc and script) and pitch the expired stuff.
Hoarder.
I like to think I’ll eventually take it.
Or sell it when people finally realize I’m not really a writer.
I get rid of meds that are expired or that I don’t need anymore… but I honestly have yet to deal with having the heavy duty pain meds with extra laying around… so we’ll see what happens when I’m in that situation. Only because like what Jess said before… I’m not sure if there’s a procedure for disposing of those?
I’m a pitcher for sure (unless it’s the really good stuff and then I’ll keep it until it expires).
If you look in my underwear drawer you’ll find: a sim card for my phone for trips back to New Zealand (who wants to pay for international roaming!?), old coins from NZ (they have now replaced them all with tiny ones that feel like play money), a squash ball (even I dont know why it is in there) and my favourite photo of my husband and I (I dont want it to get bent and yes, I realise I could enjoy it more in a frame than in my underwear drawer lol).
Pitcher married to hoarder. It’s nice tho going down memory lane when I occasionally ask if we can chuck stuff. “Can I get rid of these pills from the time you ran over your foot w/ a forklift?” “No? how bout these ones from the time you blew out your knee?” When there are no recent pills I feel good, and kind of want to hang a sign that says “no reason to fill a percocet scrip for ____ years.”
I can’t stop imagining an actual medication pitcher– like a jug full of pills sitting on the kitchen counter.
oddly, a little of both…i’ll forget the med is in there, or just won’t think about it needing to be replaced and it will stay there a while…with james’ meds..as soon as he changes doses or stops a med, even if there is some left, it goes in to the toilet..james takes some pretty powerful meds and i really don’t want any of the kids, or any friends, to get a hold of them…
I try to be a pitcher, but I do keep all my cat’s meds and any antibiotics we have left. But since antibiotics don’t work if you only have a few, I only keep them if it’s a full run of meds. If I get to the point where I’ll need pain pills (it’s an eventuality) then yeah, I’m going to keep the HECK out of every pill, even if I only have 1 left.
Hoarder… sometimes. We have a tendency to save things like prescriptions. And that two-year-old bottle of antibiotics that my mom turned out to be allergic to has been useful at times. I’m prone to infection and don’t have insurance. So… we’ve used up old antibiotics when one leg or the other has gotten infected. We pitch things too, though. Tossed a whole bunch of ‘good’ painkillers. Couldn’t stand to look at them. My dad died two years ago next month, and they were his. They had him on narcotic patches for years, and when he died, we threw out all of it.
Anything else, well, I hoard books. I have books I got when I was seven or eight. Yes, they’re all neatly shelved on bookcases, but I keep them. Heck, I have books crammed two rows deep with more shoved on top. And I can locate any book I own pretty fast, because they’re shelved in a system that makes sense to me.
both.
I would be a pitcher if I wasn’t so lazy and actually went through the med cabinets. But I am, so there is stuff that doesn’t belong, that I would pitch.
I am an accidental hoarder. I don’t rally mean to be, but I do subscribe to the piffle! train of thought, so I’m not too worried about getting rid of stuff. I realized, though, that I might have to change my ways when I inadvertently gave my daughter some 10-year old chloraseptic. That was gross even by my admittedly lax standards.
I hoard nothing. Keeps my house tidy clean. And I’ve never yet had one of those cirmcumstances where I wished I kept something because I all of a sudden needed it. I am more of a chronic purger. I’m always dropping something off at Good Will or trying to unload my stuff on other people. Medication – goes in the toilet.
I’m kind of a hoarder with painkillers, but I usually just give them out. I have giant ibuprofen that my husband and sister like sometimes, for various ailments. I have a big bottle of hydrocodone that I can’t take but I like knowing it’s there.
I’m a pitcher. I too worked in a pharmacy for 8 years and most of the pharmacists I ran across swore that medications either lose their effectiveness or on the rare occasion can go bad after a certain amount of time expired. One of the pharm guys said he kept meds 1 year past expiry because in his mind the drug companies built in a grace period kinda like milk that isn’t sour 1 day past it’s due date (unlike a pregnant gal who’s soul well before). I dunno, it’s a 50/50 but I like to air on the side of caution. You could probably google each med and find exactly what happens post expiry date.
Cautionary Tale: My cousin once, late at night, decided to root around in the odd pill drawer to find something that would help her get to sleep. She found and took an odd pill that she thought was a Tylenol PM, and laid down to get her much needed rest. Soon, her whole body started to tingle, not unpleasantly. It was when she suddenly got the urge to suck the toes of everyone she knew that she realized that she had accidentally taken a three year old Ecstasy pill which someone had given her as a joke!
I’m a hoarder. I even keep my pets’ meds. I finally pitched an ointment for a mystery rash I had in ’99 after keeping it for 9 years.
I once read a novel in which one of the main characters died after taking expired sinus or cold medication or something. I don’t know if that’s actually possible. But it scared me enough to get rid of expired meds. It’s been years and I’m still scared to use things that are more than a year expired. It’s not that complicated to get a new prescription and I think there is a reason for an expiration date – even if it’s not 100% set in stone.
i’m an inadvertant hoarder. in other words, i’m lazy… so i’ll hold on to things without necessarily being all “OOH I MIGHT NEED THESE 4 PILLS!” but more because “uhh.. those have been in the cabinet for like 4 years now.. they look comfy there, why disturb them?”
when i move (which is basically the only time i do overhaul cleaning, and is also approximately oncea year for the past 11 years) i toss all expired / unnecessary stuff :-)
Hoard the good shit (narcotics, the anti-inflammatory patch that is the only thing that helps my hip, etc). Pitch the over the counter stuff. My husband is a hoarder. Of EVERYTHING. So I pitch it when he isn’t home. :) Ummm? If you are allergic to a medicine, I’d pitch it in case you have a brain fade and take it accidentally. Also, antibiotics pitch it! A few aren’t going to do any good.
I usually hoard unless it’s (a) antibotics – which isn’t hard because I TAKE all of my antibotics (b) really expired for years or (c) the bottle is dried up and crusty – if you have to add water to make it work, it’s too old to work. I’m coveting the last of the precocet pills I got in 2004 or 2005 for the nasty periods. I have bad ones, but the damn ob/gyn doesn’t think bad enough for the good pills.
I used to have a problem with taking opiates even when I didn’t *need* to take them, so I used to be a hoarder but now I’m two years clean, so none of that exists in my house. I do still hoard antibiotics and Xanax, however.
I don’t pitch, I return them to the pharmacy to safely dispose of.