Fibber McGee's Bathroom Closet

Once upon a time I decided it was time to clean out the bathroom closet. There were four shelves overflowing with tubs full of cough medicine, sample bottles of who knows what, various ointments and lotions, all mixed together so you could never find whatever you were looking for, plus hair driers, curling irons, and straighteners, soap dispensers and air freshener dispensers, wrist braces, knee braces, etc., all held in place by an assortment of washcloths and towels stuffed strategically here and there.

One day I just had enough and attacked that closet like a Marine at Iwo Jima. It looked like the closet exploded. Lotions and potions and notions were all over the floor, the sink, the toilet, the edge of the tub. I separated things into His, Mine, Colds & Flu, 1st Aid, and General Bathroom Items. I'm sure you wouldn't be surprised to learn I ended up with a trash bag full of outdated medicine, random curlers, dried up fingernail polish, and other assorted bathroom crap. Then there was the bag of hair dye, curling irons, manicure sets, etc. on it's way to a re-sale shop. I put the neatly organized tubs back on the shelves, arranged the newly sorted and re-folded the towels and washcloths next to them, and even had enough room to store the food dehydrator, pressure cooker, crock pots, and other little-used kitchen gadgets in there, too.

I'm just awesome like that.

One of the unexpected discoveries was an assortment of lotions. All different brands, scents, and sizes. Little tiny sample sizes. Perfumed lotions that must have come with gift-boxed Christmas presents. Medicated lotion, organic lotion, herbal lotion, baby lotion. Since I'm not a big lotion user I'm not sure where it all came from. Well, I have a pretty good idea where the smelly perfume-y lotions came from, but since I don't remember ever going to Bath & Body Works I'm not sure how I ended up with 3 full-sized tubes of their hand lotion. 2 of them are even the exact same scent.

I don't think Goodwill accepts donations of half-used hand lotions, so I had 2 choices: actually use them or just toss them directly in the trash. I decided what the hell. I have them, I might as well use them. In order to get rid of them as fast as possible I started with the tiny samplers. An ounce and a half of Herbal Papaya-Orange Blossom lotion was the first to go. Then there was one with Tea Tree Oil that was like rubbing Absorbine Jr. on my hands. I'm not sure how many I've used up so far, 4 or 5. I'm on a medium sized bottle of peach scented lotion right now. At the rate I'm using them I'll probably still have a couple tubes this time next year.

Maybe even the year after that.

Or the year after that.