31 Days of Organizing Tips: Day 17 (Medicine Cabinet)

Welcome to Day Seventeen of the 31 Days of Organizing Tips series! Throughout this series I’m sharing organizing tips that will help you on your journey from overwhelmed to organized.

Today’s tip is about organizing your medicine cabinet. Some people store their medicines in their kitchen, some in their bathroom, and some in their linen closet. Wherever you keep them, it’s important to keep them organized, because you don’t need anything else making you feel overwhelmed when someone is sick or hurt!

A few medicine cabinet tips:

• Regularly go through your medications to ensure you eliminate items that have expired. 
• Make sure you are storing your medications at the recommended temperature.
• Keep your medications up high and locked away if you have small children in the house.
• Store all your first aid supplies (bandaids, gauze, ointments, etc.) in the same location as your medicines so you don’t need to search in multiple places for something you need.
• Choose a storage system that will work for your space and that makes the best use of the space you’ve chosen.  

For more on purging expired medications, including how to properly dispose of them, check out this post from the 31 Days of Easy Decluttering series.

Decluttering Expired Medications

Here are a variety of storage options for organizing your medicine cabinet.  Please remember to pin from the original source for all these pictures!

1.  Lazy susans / turntables.  You can rotate them to easily find what you’re looking for.  Plus, you don’t have to worry about knocking bottles over when you’re trying to reach for one that’s at the back of the shelf or forgetting what’s at the back of your cabinet, hiding behind other bottles.  These double decker turntables are great for medicines since the bottles and boxes are often short.

Turntable for Storing Medications

2. Use Caddies to organize your medications. This way you have a portable solution you can bring wherever it’s needed. 

Medication Caddy

3. Use plastic bins or containers). These are great in case any of the medicine spills (you only have to wipe out the plastic container instead of dealing with sticky medicine everywhere). You can group your medications and label the containers so you (and others who may be helping you out!) can quickly find what you need and return it to its place for the next time it’s required.

Using Plastic Bins in the Medicine Cabinet

4.  Plastic drawers. These help you keep small items separated and maximize your vertical space. They are perfect for first aid supplies and small things like medicine cups or droppers. Just make sure your bottles are completely sealed if they have to lay on their side so you don’t have a sticky mess to deal with.

Medicine Cabinet Drawers

5.  Create your own solution!  I love this system that Ginny uses with stackable letter trays and drawer organizer bins. It really made great use of her space and she was able to re-purpose items she had already.

How to Organize Medicine

For Day Seventeen, declutter your medicine cabinet. Then, if it needs better organization, choose one of these solutions or come up with one that will work for you and then make it happen. Keeping things organized in your medicine cabinet (wherever it is!) will make things less overwhelming when someone in your family is sick or hurt so it’s really worth the time it takes to organize it.

Where do you store your medicines and first aid supplies?  How do you organize them?  What’s the best organizing tip you’ve implemented?

If you need help decluttering or organizing, contact me for in-person organizing services in the Mississauga area, or virtual organizing services anywhere else. 

Happy organizing!