Managing Your Medicine Cabinet To Stay on Top of Health
Your medicine cabinet. If you’re anything like me, it’s a mess of bottles, outdated vitamin supplements and children’s products. I hate to say it, but my medicine cabinet is where old prescriptions sometimes go to die.
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Organizing our medications and our medicine cabinet could be a full time job here almost. As a Mom with complex health care needs, and a parent to kids with some unique needs and diagnoses I find the task of staying on top of everyone’s medication extremely challenging! I have forgotten to renew meds, which is bad considering that everyone in the family is on one medication or another. Well, no more! This spring I’m on a mission to get my refill schedule in order, and I think my idea can help other people too.
Table of Contents
Making the Most of My Medicine Cabinet
Rather than having a medicine cabinet disaster area, I’m going to use my medication storage to my advantage. Because seriously, I need to get it under control. That’s why I’ve put together a game plan to get me back on track with keeping all of my family’s meds organized and make sure they all stay filled on time.
Pill Box
Ah, the old pill organizer. These can be useful for anyone and especially for people who travel. Recently I got one pill box for each family member who takes meds. That way, I can keep a running tab on who’s had their medications, who hasn’t, and how many days are left in the box. This is going to be a big help, because pill boxes hold a week, or even a month’s worth of medication. Which just so happens to be what most prescriptions are. There are also blister packs available from some pharmacies. That can be extremely useful if you are forgetful.
A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place
My medicine cabinet is about to be one super organized area. My cabinet has a few shelves, and I plan on organizing my family’s medications into supplements, prescriptions, and occasional use drugs like NSAIDS, nasal sprays, and the like. Getting my medicine cabinet organized will allow me to more easily spot which medications are getting low as well as which supplements I need to reorder.
The Great Purge
While I’m on the subject of organizing my medicine cabinet, I should remind everyone to do something I haven’t done in quite some time. Purge. I am pretty sure that I have at least a couple of bottles of medications that are at least a year old. That’s not good. Not only do older medications lose potency, making them less effective, they also clutter up my medicine cabinet and give me an opportunity to self medicate conditions rather than seeing the doctor. By the way there are many safe disposal options. Often pharmacies will run a safe disposal option or a medicine cabinet cleanup day. Look for one now and then ditch the old outdated and unsafe prescriptions and vitamins.
Desktop Calendar
My final strategy to staying on top of my meds and keeping my medicine cabinet in order is using my desktop calendar to my advantage. I’m going to go through all of my family’s current medications and use my desktop calendar to mark when I need to reorder each one. My calendar features the ability to color code, so I’m going to use that to keep track of who’s medication is who’s.
BY the way I also have a handy free printable that will help both me and you to stay on top of prescription renewals.
My Medicine Cabinet Will Work for Me, Not Against Me
I’m on a mission. Last week we almost ran out of one of the kid’s prescriptions again, so I’m making a change. By keeping my medicine cabinet more organized, purging old medications, and using my desktop calendar, I’m going to have a medicine cabinet that works for me, not against me. Give these tips a try, and let me know if they work for you.
Download this printable
To download the above printable just click on the Medication Tracker highlighted link and you can print it out for your family. Also if you need more printables here’s the link to an Easter word search printable and Don’t forget to pop by my free printables Pinterest board.
Suggested Tools:
This is the pill organizer I love for several reasons. It is transparent. It is compact and discreet and also the zip case means the pills won’t fall into the bottom of your purse.
Buy One Now – > LeanTravel Pill Organizer
17 Comments
Robin (Masshole Mommy)
Thanks so much for the reminder that I need to go in and purge some stuff. I have a ton of expired stuff in there.
Alli
Thankfully, no one in my family is on medications that require prescriptions at this time. But you have reminded me to clean out my medicine basket. I keep it in an upper cabinet and it needs some serious cleaning out. I’m sure there are lots of expired medications.
Jeanette
Thankfully at our house at this point we do not have any medications we need to take. My father on the other hand has a whole little daily pillbox that he uses and he is very organized about.
Pam
I need to purge my medicine cabinet for sure. I am sure I have some expired things lurking in there somewhere. I do have everything organized by type, which is helpful.
William Sweeney
These are great tips! With three kids it can be overwhelming sometimes how much of different things we have to keep track of when they all get sick at once
Eloise
I’m pretty good at this! I wasn’t always though… I had out dated med’s piling up at one point in my life, until I chose to do something about it! great post!
Paula
Thanks Eloise! Glad to hear that you are on top of it!
Gwendolyn Mulholland
I am always cleaning out our medicine cabinet (or in our case a 3 drawer plastic storage container) because I don’t want to need something and find out it is expired. My husband takes multiple medications and we love using pill containers so he has what he needs each day without checking bottles. These are great tips.
kayla
I did this the other day 🙂 I had to throw out so much that was well past its use by date! WOops! 🙂
Chantal
This is a great printable to help keep track of everything. I have some bottles in my medicine cabinet that I don’t even know what it is. Time to clean it out for sure!
Vidya Sudarsan
My medicine cabinet is a mess, and I need to do this at my home. I like the tracker very much and it will come in handy if I stick it inside the cabinet. Purging is a great way to get rid of unwanted medications.. Like all your tips here!
Angie
I don’t really have a lot of medications laying around, but this is so important-especially for people who do. I need a medicine cabinet still though. Curse my small house.
Stephanie of The TipToe Fairy
I am so bad about cleaning out the medicine cabinet. I do keep old prescriptions of antibiotics just in case. But everything else I try to remember to toss, but it always seems I forget. This is a great reminder!
Ashley Whipple
Love the medicine tracker. I have a problem with keeping track of expiration dates.
Jasmine Watts
These are great tips and great printable to help keep track of everything. Great Reminder!!
Tiffany
I should make a calendar on when to reorder medicine… and when to take it. I’m so bad with taking medicine when I should.
Garf
My hubby is on prescription medication. I make charts in his notebook and put it & pen near the meds.