When most people hear the word 'apothecary', they either have no idea what that is, or, they have images of some dusty old, un-organized heap of bottles and books laying around in some wretched abandoned room in a lost castle or cottage. They imagine spiders crawling out of the eye sockets of skulls. They think that there is enough dust on everything to enable the FDA to classify the area as either a geological survey site, or an archaeological dig area. I assure you, none of the above mentioned scenarios is the case. Ever, no matter how 'sloppy' someone thinks they are. The truth? More often than not you will find the home of an apothecary to be cleaner, and more organized than you'd ever imagine. Well how else do you think we can just put our hands on a bunch of ingredients at the drop of a hat? We handle fresh herbs, spices and other such ingredients. The area has to be kept as clean as possible at all times. Remember, APs (Alternative Practitioners) handle natural medicine, food and beverages. In other words - things that are normally ingested. Even things that are not for consumption, are kept as clean as humanly possible. The ingredients we use can have all types of storage needs from no light to full light, and from hot to cold and back again. Thus, we have no choice but to keep everything we use as organized, clean and sterile as we are capable of.
We tend to organize the living daylights out of everything from the garden to the attic. We very well may have the sock drawer looking like it just got run through by a hurricane, but by golly, those herbs will darn well be in place...or else! Don't even think about touching the bottles, and for the love of anything you consider sacred, never, under any circumstances, should you even so much as blink the wrong way at our cabinets! Sock drawer...no problem. Rummage through that all you want to. Herbs? Touch them and you will be promptly turned into a toad. OK, perhaps not that but, you get the idea. This is where my 'lecture' part comes in for new-comers, younger practitioners or, those in society that think it's going to be 'ultra cool' and 'totally sick' to be able to make all this 'cool stuff'. If you're going to start taking on the task of collecting herbs for anything other than making a really nice pasta sauce, be prepared to have the equivalent of a 5-star master kitchen....all over the entire house. Trust and believe right now, it is not 'fine' to just leave things laying all over the place. You need to get down right nuts when it comes to keeping things in their places. A sloppy teen-ager who thinks shoving everything they own into a closet, just so their parents won't have a cow over their messy room is by no means prepared to start working with herbal medicine. It just will NOT be safe, on any level. Sorry folks, but dust bunnies, cob webs and Rosemary is not a good combination.
Gardens are organized so that the gardener knows exactly what is growing, where it is growing, how well it is growing, and can usually tell by just glancing at the garden if anything in particular needs immediate attention. Herbs are dried and stored properly. The harvest date is noted, the dry date may be noted, the storage date may be noted. It's actually quite detailed. Here's an example of how detailed I've seen some practitioners get with their herb gardens.
First, when the soil is tilled, they will note this on their calender. Then, when the seeds are planted, this too will be noted on the calender. Stopping here for a moment: For those who either can not, or do not, garden - some soil needs to set for a day or two after it is tilled, especially if compost, amendment or other types of additional items are added to the tilled soil. OK, onward we go. After the seeds are sewn, they will note how often the garden is watered. Other notes include: How much sun/shade each plant gets. What kinds of fertilizers (if any) are added to help the over all health of the plant. Any indications of bugs, or other intruders to the garden will be noted. I've even seen notes regarding plant reactions to full moon light. It can get THAT technical. I don't go that far - not by a long shot - but I have seen it done. The results, for the record, are amazing. I've also seen gardens that grow everything a person needs for almost every need they could have. This itself is a tremendous amount of work (think: hard physical labor).
For the record, we don't spend a ton of money getting everything we need in order. We don't go out and buy boxes of organizers, bags of labels or crates full of craft supplies. We simply don't do it. The main reason is that almost none of us can afford to spend that kind of money, and the other reason is because at this point, we're so used to re-purposing half of everything we own, we don't see the point in spending money on things we already have 9 tons of. Make sense? OK, good. Let's move on. First tip to getting clean and organized is to actually take every single last thing out of every single last drawer, box, bag, crate, can, bottle, jar and basket. Next, organize them in groups. Preferably groups that are smaller than the size of Asia. Baskets get hung, not stacked. Take a hand full of long nails, or large screw-in style hooks, and hang those baskets up and out of the way. If you use large enough hooks, you can hang more than one basket on them. Jars get stored by size, not by shape. You can have a million square jars, but if you have many different sizes, the shape doesn't mean a damned thing. SIZE, not shape! See the photo of the black cabinet? See how every one of those jars is stored by size? OK, you got it. Let's move on again.
Books get organized by TYPE, not size. Tools get organized by USE, not material or size. For example: Tools that get used for food/medicine/herbal production get stored far and clear of tools that are used for NON-food/medicine/herbal production. Food/medicine/herbal = anything that you consume and digest. NON-Food/medicine/herbal = anything you can NOT consume and digest. Jars, bottles and other such storage containers need to be clearly labeled, with easy to read writing (use a label maker if your hand writing looks like something a blind chicken would make). All storage jars and bottles should have air tight lids/seals. This is not only to keep the contents fresh, for as long as possible, but also to keep out as many 'unseen things' as possible (bacteria, mold, mildew, pollen, viruses, microbes...and so forth), which can harm the contents of the container. Finally, one of the most important things you need to do is clean....everything. Everything. Every-thing. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g!!! If it doesn't get 100% clean, re-purpose it for something else, and use another item that IS clean.
In my house, if someone asks me where the mustard is, I can not only tell them, but I can give them GPS style directions right to it, no matter what it is. For example: "Where's the mustard?" My response: "Door of the fridge, left side, second shelf down behind the cream cheese tub". If they can't find it...they they're either blind, or dead. You need to be this organized in order to allow yourself to be a better Alternative Practitioner. It's almost a requirement. There are no excuses for not being organized, and clean. OK, there are a few. Dying, bleeding profusely from more than one eye socket, lost a limb in the cauldron, eye of newt lunged out at you and cut your tongue off, or, death itself. Outside of those, no exceptions! Unless, of course, you were temporarily burnt around the edges because your fire breathing dragon had an allergy attack - again.
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