How often do you purge your medicine cabinet? You should plan to clean through your cabinet and properly dispose of any medications every six months. Using expired medications can be hazardous to your health. Therefore, you should not be saving unused prescription medications for later use, nor be saving expired prescription or over-the-counter medications.

Tina Zook, Pharmacy Director at NorthShore, provides the following instructions for properly disposing of medications:

• Do not flush medications down the toilet. Most medications should be disposed of in other ways. For a complete list of medications that can be flushed down the toilet or poured down the sink, refer to the FDA website.
• Follow any specific medication disposal instructions on the drug label or patient information.
• Contact your city or county government’s household trash and recycling services for locations to return your unwanted medications (Drug Take-Back Programs). Find out if there are any restrictions on the types of medications that can be returned.

There will be instances where instructions are not given on the drug label and a drug take-back program is not available. In these cases, you follow the following steps for disposing of medications:

1. Take the medication out of the original containers (do not crush tablets or capsules) and mix the medication with an unpalatable substance (kitty litter or used coffee grounds).
2. Place the mixture in a sealable bag or empty container to prevent the medication from leaking or breaking out of a garbage bag.
3. Throw the sealable bag or another container in the household garbage.

How often do you clean your medicine cabinet? What has your process been for disposing of medications?