This Is Why You Should Never Keep Your Meds In The Bathroom

Do not use your medicine cabinet for medicine. Seriously.

You store all your prescriptions/ibuprofen/cold 'n' flu meds in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, right?

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Like a lot of other humans on planet Earth.

Because DUH, isn't that what a bathroom medicine cabinet should be for?

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Why else would it be in the bathroom?

But actually...your bathroom medicine cabinet is exactly where you SHOULDN'T keep your meds.

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"Restrooms are probably the worst place besides right in the kitchen to have [medications]," Heather Free, Pharm.D., a local practicing pharmacist in Washington D.C., and a spokesperson for American Pharmacists Association, tells BuzzFeed. "We have a lot of humidity and moisture in there and sometimes that moisture can really interfere with the stability of the medication."

It's true: Moisture, heat, and possibly even mold from all that ~hot water~ in your bathroom is super bad for your meds.

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"[Moisture] can make medication less effective — if you’ve ever seen a tablet get wet, it makes it disintegrate a little bit — so that’s what the moisture is doing to it,"

Free says.

"Sometimes, too, the restroom is a great place for mold," she adds. "You really don’t want mold growing on the medicines that you’re taking."

Other places you can't keep meds: in your kitchen, your car, next to windows, or anywhere it gets too hot.

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"If you have a window, and the sun is beaming directly into your place, it's shining head-on to your medications," Free says. "That heat can change the stability of the medicine."

You may be tempted to just stick all your drugs in the fridge, but that's also not a great idea.

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Unless your meds are supposed to be refrigerated, don't stick your meds in there. "Sometimes the refrigerator has moisture," says Free.

The best place to store all your meds? A bedroom drawer.

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That's because drawers in your bedroom are generally dry places that don't go up and down in temperature a whole lot.

But using a bedroom drawer isn't necessarily the right choice for everyone. "It just depends if you have kids or not," says Free. If you do have kids or pets who could potentially get into medication, Free recommends putting it in a locked drawer, or "putting it in a locked armoire — as long as it’s not directly in sunlight."

But what if your apartment/home gets super hot sometimes?

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You've got a couple of options. "If you have a shaded area in your house — a lot of times under the bed doesn't get that hot compared to room temperature, [or] where the window is," says Free.

And if your apartment gets really REALLY hot: "You can put medicine inside a cooler with an ice pack just for the day," she adds.

And if you're ordering meds through the mail, make sure they don't feel warm to the touch when you get them.

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Sometimes packages in the mail — including medications — can end up in hot warehouses on their way to you.

You don't have to stop ordering things by mail, as pharmacists often take this into account. But "if the actual pill bottle is warm [when it arrives at your home], call the pharmacy and say, 'Hey, I think this is too hot to touch,'" says Free.

Bottom line: When in doubt about how to store ANY meds — ask your pharmacist!

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"A pharmacist can get that information [regarding how to treat your meds] for you and assist you with [any questions you have about] your storage of all medicines," Free says.

Which is to say: They're there to help!