Organize your medicine cabinet
Published Saturday January 24th, 2009
Helpful tips make for easy storage
You're in the middle of cooking supper and your child comes into the kitchen looking for a band aid. He's fallen playing outside and is now crying for your help.
You dig through the cupboard under the bathroom sink, check the change compartment in your purse and eventually find a band aid in the cupboard above the kitchen sink.
By the time supper is over, the dishes are clean and all the homework is done for another day, you're starting to feel a headache come on.
But where did you put the pain killers you picked up with groceries last week?
Wouldn't it be nice if all these items were where they're supposed to be? In one nicely organized location -- ready and waiting for you when need.
In an ideal world, that place would be the medicine cabinet.
Though right now it may be jammed with half-used cosmetics, tattered first-aid supplies, potions for various parts of your body, and assorted medications -- both prescription and non-prescription -- it doesn't have to be that way.
Kim Eagles, a firm believer in proper storage and the owner of Kaos Solutions in Moncton, a store dedicated to keeping your life in order, says storing items properly can maximize space value.
"Little things you would normally throw in a drawer, can be stored in small, plastic, see-through containers. You would be surprised how containerized items keep space to a minimum," she says.
According to Kim, the key to functional organization of any area, and especially one that can get as hard to manage as a household medicine cabinet, is to store items in a practical place, in accordance with who lives in your household.
"If you have kids, you want to keep medicines out of reach," she explains.
But that's not all, "store it where you would use it so it's easy to find," she says.
Dyson Jones, a pharmacist for Salisbury Pharmacy says it makes sense to keep first-aid kits in an easy-to-reach location.
"It can vary from home to home, but it should be easily accessible. There's no sense to having it chucked away somewhere," he says.
Some ideas include in the bathroom, in a main-floor closet or in the kitchen.
Medication, for example, is usually stored in the bathroom, Kim's noticed. But for her, the kitchen is ideal.
"The kitchen for me is a key area, up on the top shelf. For some, traditionally the bathroom is where you store your medicines, but it's not where you use them."
However, things such as band-aids and other first aid kit supplies can be kept in the bathroom, she says.
"A central point in the house or the main bathroom, you can keep band-aids in the cupboard. So, if you cut yourself, you could just grab a band-aid."
Storing like items with other like items and labelling them in clear tupperware containers is also a good idea, she mentions. It can remind people when the container is getting full and when they need to clear some items out.
"When they're full, it means time to go through them and check expiration labels. It lets you know, 'OK, I have too much stuff.'"
Dyson says when it comes to that point, proper disposal is necessary. Band-aids and items of that nature are fine for garbages, but expired pills and other medications should ideally go to a pharmacy to be disposed of.
Regular maintenance of the supplies will also ensure you're ready to act when necessary.
"You should have different sized band-aids, gauze tape, scissors, anti-biotic ointment and different variations on them," says Dyson. When travelling, there are also tips that can help keep you on top of medications, Kim says.
"There's different ways of looking at it. Where you're going, if you're on daily medications such as a senior and other things."
She says a simple plastic container is fine for a traveller to put the basic items in. For seniors and persons on daily medications, a bag large enough to accommodate several days worth of various medications can be quite useful.
Not only does organizing pills properly before leaving home eliminate the need to spend time doing that on the road, it also ensures that you don't need to worry over whether meds were packed -- or worse -- where you decided to put them.
"Get a nice looking bag, but so you can put everything you need in it and so you can know it's your travel bag. Just pick it up and go," says Kim.
And spending a lot isn't necessary, she says. A re-purposed backpack or tupperware container will work fine.
Other helpful tips she mentions include, always keeping medications in their original packages and making sure to properly dispose of old or unused items.
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