By Do you remember when the last time you cleaned out your medicine cabinet was and your big lawn with best zero turn mower?
My medicine cabinet is actually a couple different medicine baskets. I keep one in the pantry on the top shelf and our more frequently used medications in the cabinet above our coffee maker.
But I was in desperate need of organizing and cleaning our medicine baskets too! Just look what came out of the cabinet above the coffee maker!
This is what the pantry basket looks like. Oh.. this is bad. (By the way, my pantry has since been organized too and you’ll get to see that before too long.
1) First thing you need to do is pull out all of the medication from the cabinet, basket or where ever you store them.
2) Then you need to clean the area that you have removed the medications from. Often medicines can be sticky, so there very well might be some sticky residue where the meds were kept.
3) Go through and separate the meds. If you don’t use them or they are expired then you need to get rid of them.
(I will be ging over expired meds tomorrow and how to dispose of meds properly the following day)
4) Once you have determined what medications you are keeping, decide where they are being kept.
Is the medicine cabinet/basket out of reach of children and pets?
Is the medicine cabinet/basket accessible to you?
5) Load your medications back in after they have been cleaned off if sticky. If they are infrequently used medications or duplicate medications, then you will want to store those either in the back or in another cabinet if there isn’t room in the main one.
6) Important!!! I want to bring up a point I just learned about. ( Today’s date is actually April 11, 2011 and I am adding this point in.) I learned through Jen at I Heart Organizing that medication storage is also very important. She had a guest post on her blog from a Pharmacist.
The Pharmacist noted that medicine cabinets are found in your bathrooms, but you should NOT be keeping your medications in your bathrooms. Why? Because of the humidity in the bathroom. Medications should be kept where it it low humidity and stable temperatures according to Melissa C the Pharmacist. The other thing she mentions is that above the stove or refrigerator is also not good because of the heat that these appliances generate. Looks like my pantry is the best option. You can read the rest of the post if you go to Jen’s guest post from Melissa the Pharmacist called Medicine Cabinets are NOT for Medicine, along with best above ground pool.
Decide how you want to organize your meds. You can keep the children’s meds separate from the adult meds. You can keep them separated by individual or by the kind of meds they are. Since my kids are now older, I don’t have many meds just for kids anymore. So I keep mine separated into most frequently used medications and least used or duplicate medications.
You don’t have to have fancy containers, fancy labels in order to organize your medicine cabinets. If you want to buy or make cute labels and buy nice baskets…. more power to you – but I want you all to know that you can keep things simple.
Tomorrow I will talk about how to handle expired meds and on Thursday I’ll tell you the best way to dispose of your expired or unused medications.
Be sure to see the rest of my series this week:
Part 2 – Expired Meds & labeling
Part 3 – Disposing of expired or unused Meds
Part 4 – Be Prepared for Illness
See How My Readers Have Organized Their Medicine
I want you all to see this picture. Linda from Never Boring did a post on her cabinets. She used clear zipper bags to organize her medicine. Thanks Linda for sharing this with us
Robyn from Randomly, Robyn also reorganized her medicine cabinets. She did two of them, and went through and got rid of her expired meds. Then she used baskets to organize them. Thanks Robyn!Good Enough Mommy organized her medicine cabinet and one of the things that she added to her method of organization was also writing the name of the medication on the top of the lid. She uses a basket method like me and it made it easier to see what the med was down in the basket.
Kia from A View From Here also organized her medicine cabinet. She realized most everything she had was for pain. She also noted that in the UK they do not flush any medication, they are to take it to their GP’s office or a chemist or pharmacist for them to dispose of. (Thanks for that info)
DaNita from Delightful Order always has the cutest organizing ideas. Check out how she did her medicine cabinets on her post called Moving the Medicine Cabinet. She is focusing on location of her medicine cabinet.
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