Say Cheese!

I am working my way through the bathroom. The first step was to get rid of all the clutter. The massive cleaning will come after. For such a small bathroom, there is quite a lot of storage. Inside the linen closet are 5 shelves that go about 30 inches deep. There is also the medicine chest, and the cabinets under the sink.

But, even having all these places to put things is no reason to have the odd collection of things that I found there. I threw away 3 bags of trash. Yes - three - full whole bags. Everything from 5 year old pregnancy tests to a large bag of TWA travel soaps. First off, TWA hasn't been around for over a decade. When questioned, Kevin confessed that as a young professional back in the early 90s, TWA had screwed him once, and the only way he could think to get back was to steal all the lavatory soaps every chance he got. While clearly this scheme worked - after all they DID go under - I'm still not sure why he had to SAVE all the soaps.

Of course there were the obligatory expired medicines - I think the prize winner was from 1996. And, lots of hotel bottles of shampoos, lotions, old hair styling products (did I ever use stiff hold gel?). But the thing I found the most of was dental products. Some of it is attributed to the fact that we each get a goodie bag at our bi-annual dental visits, but it went beyond that. 24 sample tubes of tooth paste, more then 3 dozen mini packs of floss, 3 packages of flosser replacement heads, 3 different electric toothbrushes, and about 15 unopened toothbrushes. Aside from the used electric ones, I may hand out these products at Halloween and keep the flavored Tootsie Rolls for myself.

In addition to being overly stocked in the dental hygiene department, we had lots of overlap in the face department too. In the course of cleaning this and the other bathrooms in the house, I have found no fewer than 4 Norelco razors. Just how many chins does one guy have? But, before I dared to complain, I also found about 8 different bottles of moisturizer for my face. Some quite expensive. And, do I ever use any of them? Nope. Well, almost nope. Sometimes for a few weeks in the winter when my skin dries out. But certainly not enough to warrant 2 different types much less 8.

All of these discoveries made me wonder what exactly we think of our own faces. Why do we save all this stuff and never use it? Or, if we don't use it, why do we keep buying it? I don't know if I'll ever figure out the answers to the questions of our vanity. But, I do know that now there are far fewer things in the closet, so I may actually be able to find what I need. I also can put my toiletries IN the medicine cabinet rather than having to perch them all on the counter.