There Comes a Time to Throw Away

Every so often there comes a time to clean and sort and organize. I consider myself pretty good in this department and so it comes as a bit of a surprise to me how remiss I had become. A couple of weeks ago I woke up in the night with nausea, the bad kind. I knew my Addison's was acting up, so I fished through the night stand drawer and found my antinausea med's and took one. That was at 3 AM, at 3:30 I took another and at 4 AM it was too late...... I will spare you the details but at 4:45 the paramedics were taking me to Overlake hospital. I was out by noon re hydrated and medicated for the nausea but it was a week recovering from what that does to my system.

Skip to last weekend. Bill got this full body rash and was itching like crazy so I went to the medicine cupboard and got him some Benadryl. An hour later the rash was worse and it was getting into his throat.

So here is the rest of the story. The med's I took we later relized, when Bill was looking at the labels, had expired in 2005. The med's Bill took had expired in 2006. Old drugs don't work. They either loose their potiency or turn toxic and make you sicker. So we went on a cleaning purge at our house. I think I started stockpiling a little in 1999 when "they" said you should have extra med's for Y2K and then after 9-11 when getting certain things became challenging for a while because of shipping issues. Anyway I had very old, Aleve, Tylenol, Vitamins, even peroxide, lots of perscription drugs. We filled 4 plastic grocery bags of old drugs. I had just heard a program on the radio about disposing of old meds by mixing them into kitty litter or old coffee grounds and then disposing of them in plastic, in the garbage not recycling or the yard waste. Duh.

But now I was cleaning so I through out: colored sugar, I haven't made a sugar cookie in 10 years I am sure. Old tea, who knows how old. Food coloring that had expired in 1997, I would want that in my food? Instant Coffee, I have no idea how long that has been there. Then there is the stuff like soup mixs and instant noodle things I know I am never going to make, they all went in the trash also. Now our garbage can is really full and I feel much better. Quite Cleansed.