things in medicine bottles

I'm sure many of you reuse medicine bottles for keeping small things like fasteners, passive electronic components, etc. I'm sure you also will throw away lots of bottles rather than peeling off the labels because the process can be slow and leave messy partially-delaminated paper, and stickum all over. Here's something I learned recently from my pharmacist: A prescription label will come off cleanly if you try to take it off within a couple days after being stuck on the bottle. So when you get your meds home, take the label off, stick it on your forehead, then put it back on the bottle. When the bottle is empty, the label will peel off cleanly and easily. Skin oils do the magic. This is also helpful for more secure destruction of the label. -- David Griffith dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu