Keeping a few of those little plastic dose cups that come in a cough syrup package can be useful. If more than one person in the house catches a cold at the same time, there are enough clean cups to go around, and nobody has to wash the cups immediately while feeling tired and sick. But on the other hand, it’s not necessary to keep every cup from every package of cold medication bought over the past ten years!
 

As with any other clutter, they just take up space and get in the way when they’re not purged regularly. The stacks get so tall that when someone reaches into the cabinet, the cups are likely to tip over, making an annoying mess. And I had some particularly useless cups because the manufacturer recently changed the markings and dose instructions from teaspoons to milliliters. So I threw away all the old cups marked only in teaspoons, while keeping the new ones with metric markings and a few transitional cups marked with both.

In general, it’s important to check the contents of a medicine shelf or drawer regularly. Otherwise it gets cluttered not only with old dose cups, but also with old expired medicines, which can be dangerous. To prevent environmental contamination, old medicines should not be poured down the sink; they need to be disposed of properly.

About Clutter Comedy: Every Sunday (which I envision as a day of rest after a productive week of de-cluttering) I post a Clutter Comedy article describing my most memorable clutter discovery of the week. Other bloggers who wish to join in are welcome—just post a link in the comments! There’s no need to publish any “before” photos of your clutter, if they are too embarrassing. The idea is simply to get motivated to clean it up, while having a bit of fun too!