Terms Governing Medicine Cabinet Archaeology

Article I. Scope

These Terms apply to any bathroom cabinet, drawer, or shelf that contains: products from a previous skincare routine, medications no longer prescribed, test kits of unclear purpose, two mostly empty tubes of the same cream, a thermometer whose batteries have not been confirmed working, and a chapstick with no known origin.

The Terms apply to this cabinet now. The Terms have applied to previous cabinets. The Terms will apply to future cabinets.

Article II. Classification of Contents

The cabinet's contents are divided into three categories:

Category A: In Use. These items are used regularly. They are accessible at the front and take up approximately twenty percent of available space.

Category B: Possibly Still Relevant. These items were acquired for specific purposes that have not fully concluded or cannot be confirmed as concluded. Expiry dates may be past or approaching. They occupy forty percent of available space.

Category C: Archaeological. These items are here because the cabinet was never sorted. They include: a vitamin supplement from a health goal pursued for approximately three weeks, a very small tube of prescription cream for a condition that resolved, and a hair tie that has been in the cabinet since before the current tenant moved in. They occupy forty percent of available space.

Article III. Why Sorting Feels Like a Separate Project

Sorting the cabinet requires: time, an assessment of what is safe to discard, a decision about where prescription medications should be taken for disposal (a question that was looked up and then not acted on), and a willingness to acknowledge several Category B items by expiry date.

These are four distinct tasks. Together they constitute a project. Projects require scheduling. The cabinet does not require scheduling.

The cabinet continues to work as a cabinet. The arrangement is suboptimal but functional.

Article IV. Territorial Logic

Objects in the cabinet have established positions. Category C items at the back have been there long enough that their positions are respected by new arrivals. Cleaning around them has preserved their positions.

Normal use — that is, removing Category C items — would now feel like reorganization that requires a decision about what replaces them.

These Terms are in effect until the separate project occurs. The separate project has been on the list for eight months.