Evolution of the Medicine Cabinet

I remember elementary school so well.  I remember spinning on the playground with my friends making my skirt twirl around.  I remember the magazine I created with cut-out pictures of Ricky Schroeder that I tried to get my friends to subscribe to.  What I find fascinating is that all of that seems like it wasn't that long ago but really...I have gray hair now.  Not a lot.  Just a taste of it to remind me that I now parent an elementary school child and those days are long gone.  My medicine cabinet is proof.

The other day I was cleaning my girls' sink in the bathroom and their medicine cabinet was open.  I stood there for a few minutes enjoying the simple contents of it.  I saw tiny bottles of nail polish, hair detangler, princess toothpaste, a green comb, various hair accessories, and cupcake bandages.  It was such a sweet collection of little girl things.  It made me think about how one's medicine cabinet changes through the years.

In a few years their cabinet won't contain things like princess toothpaste and detangler.  I will soon find hair gel and eye liner. Tiny bottles of Hello Kitty nail polish will be replaced with 10 bottles of Wet N Wild nail polish.  By then I won't even be allowed in their bathroom and won't be allowed to know what else they keep in there.

In college the medicine cabinet holds things like birth control pills, condoms, Vicodin you "borrowed" from your friend who had a root canal, Nyquil, No-Doz, sun block, aspirin, tweezers because you finally decided to pluck your eye-brows, and leg wax because you're on the prowl.  

Then you meet "him".  Your medicine cabinets collide.  Your tampons are mixed with his aftershave.  You try to share toothpaste but his is awful so you now have two tubes.  You have four sticks of deodorant.  One is his and the other three are yours because the first one smelled too powdery and the next two were buy one get one free.  Your make-up bag has gotten bigger by now too because you now have a "real" job so you buy fancy Lancome make-up which has the added bonus of the free gift (with a $75 purchase of course).  

You have a baby.  The mess above now has a rectal thermometer, Vaseline, Anbesol,  two bottles of Prenatal vitamins (one made you puke so you bought the other), Children's Tylenol and Motrin, and several salves for sore breasts and bottoms.  You find that every time you open it, something falls out which makes you feel inadequate as a homemaker so you find time one day to throw out anything with an expiration date in the last 4 years.

Babies grow and life gets more hectic.  You find that you've added another bottle of aspirin, two bottles of medication for your back pain, and you hate to admit it...but you snuck out and bought an electric nose-hair trimmer.  You have eye drops for pink-eye that your kids give you at least two times a year.  You have prescriptions for heart burn medication.  Two kinds.  You feel a little bit old so you go out and buy light blue nail polish for your toes because you're still cool.  You have three of those little baggies you get when you buy a new sweater.  You know...the ones with the extra button and the piece of thread?  You have no idea where to put them so they pile up on the top shelf behind your earrings.  And so it goes...

My medicine cabinet will continue to evolve as I do.  I'm sure I will see a variety of items appear and it seems that as we age, the contents of the cabinet seem to get a little more embarrassing. Thank goodness we married someone who will share the shelf with the embarrassing things we need to support our aging selves.  It's OK though...because the nose-hair trimmer is not yours anyway...right?