Realtor @lmac924_realtor was using her childhood bathroom at her mom’s house when she opened the medicine cabinet and started pulling out what was inside. She filmed it as a 46 second reel and posted it on September 27, 2026, with a caption that opens with the line “POV: You’re using your childhood bathroom at mom’s house.”

The reel starts with the cabinet door swinging open next to a mirror. The camera settles on the shelves, and her hand pulls items forward one at a time to show them to the lens.

What the camera shows is a crowded, layered shelf. A box of Clairol Nice’n Easy hair color sits upright in the back, the blonde model on the front facing the camera. Next to it stands a bottle of Clairol A Touch of Sun, a hair lightening spray. A CVS brand nasal spray is on the same shelf, along with a Burt’s Bees body wash in the Spearmint and Lime scent, and a small glass perfume bottle with a metal cap.

She lifts a few of the smaller items into view. One is a slim tube of lip gloss in a shimmery, holographic wrapper, which she turns in her fingers. Another is a tiny round pot with an iridescent lid, which she twists and holds up to the light. Later she pulls out a tube of Icy Hot pain relief cream and a small foil packet. Lower shelves hold Proactiv skincare bottles and a Clinique bottle with the number 2 on it, and on the top shelf in the final seconds a small pink item sits among the bottles.

The captions and hashtags carry the jokes. She writes “Lipgloss from 1998? Still ‘good.’” and “Sun In? 👀” and “Skincare that hasn’t existed since flip phones?” She then adds the line “Ma’am… this is no longer a pool day…it’s now an archaeological dig.” The 1998 figure is her caption’s claim, and the video does not show a date code on any item, so treat it as her joke about how old the lip gloss feels, not a verified date. Her hashtags include #MakeupArchaeology, #BoomerMom and #DeclutterWithMe.

The shelf raises a real question for anyone who has opened a parent’s cabinet during a visit: what is safe to keep? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says on its cosmetics shelf life page that “there are no U.S. laws or regulations that require cosmetics to have specific shelf lives.” Makers are responsible for product safety, so a lipstick or lotion has no mandatory expiration date printed on it. The agency does say that products which count as drugs, such as SPF makeup, must carry expiration dates.

That matters for a cabinet like hers, which mixes categories. The lip gloss, perfume, body wash and hair color are cosmetics. The nasal spray and the Icy Hot are over the counter drug products, the category the FDA says must carry expiration dates, so look for a printed date on the package or tube first when you empty a shelf.

For the makeup, the FDA describes what degradation looks like. Products can dry out and harden or crack, emulsions can separate, and heat, sunlight and air can change a product’s color, texture and smell. Eye area products wear out fastest: manufacturers usually recommend discarding mascara two to four months after purchase, according to the FDA, and the agency says never to add water or, even worse, saliva to moisten dried mascara because that introduces bacteria.

Storage is where a bathroom cabinet works against you. The FDA advises against leaving cosmetics exposed to heat, such as in a hot car, and notes that moisture, such as in a bathroom, may make bacteria and fungi grow more easily.

If you are about to sort through a relative’s cabinet yourself, a practical order follows from the video and the FDA guidance. Pull everything out onto a counter so you can see each item. Read the package for a printed date, and set aside any medicine past its date. Look and smell for the changes the FDA lists. Anything that fails those checks, along with anything you would put near your eyes that is old, goes in the trash. What passes can go back in a drawer or a dry closet instead of the steamy bathroom.