Visitors beware: My medicine cabinet is dangerous

After reading a recent report which stated that four out of 10 people look inside medicine cabinets when visiting someone’s home, I decided to take a look at what was inside my own cabinets. After all, I’d hate to think that someone got sick from something they stole. 

Although I have two bathrooms; I have a tendency to use both of them. I decided it was time to do a little cleaning. Years ago, when I painted the bathroom, I thought I cleaned the medicine cabinet, but from the looks of it, maybe not.

The cabinet contained some rather interesting items. I found three badly used razors, of the plastic variety. One had attached itself to the top glass shelf. Maybe the heat from the shower had melted it in place. I’m not sure who used it last. My girls, who claimed this bathroom before going away to college, left home in the late 1990s. The razors were pushed to the back of the shelf, so maybe they were hidden away in case their mother forgot to buy new razors and they would have to resort to the “sharpest” one they could find. 

On the second shelf was a package of dental floss which I’m pretty sure we brought with us when we moved to this town in 1972. It was a rather large container of floss, but I rather think it should have run out by now. I threw it away … along with the razors. Beside the dental floss was a container of hydrogen peroxide which contained more germs than it could kill and a toothbrush I bought in a small pharmacy in Paris is 2004. I just hated to throw it away, but from the looks of it, someone has used it to clean around places in the bathroom that we will not discuss. It was just lying back there against the wall, ruffled and splayed.

Although it is officially the medicine cabinet, I keep few medicines there. There were three lose pills on the bottom shelf. One I’m pretty sure was an aspirin. One was green. One, a capsule, had seen better days. The real stuff is in the hall closet or stored in the other bathroom where there is a medicine cabinet big enough to hold the pills required to keep me alive and kicking. 

What was most fascinating in the bathroom cabinet was the array of things which don’t belong there. A broken watch, one earring, a diamond-like ring which would not even come close to fooling a jewel thief and would probably make its way into the drain if left there. There was a ticket to a play which looked like it had been used for dental floss and a spoon. A spoon? 

When my husband was alive, he kept the medicine cabinet in the other bathroom very neat. He rolled his toothpaste from the bottom. His toothbrush lay, bristles up beside it on a paper towel. His razor, of the expensive metal variety, and replacement blades had their assigned places. Medications were arranged in order of use, and he never had to wander around the house looking for a decongestant. 

The shocking part of the article in the Associated Press was that one out of four people who look in the medicine cabinets while visiting actually use something they find there: toothbrushes, combs, makeup. I hope they didn’t use that old French toothbrush in the front bathroom.