Special Note: This article is part of an intentional home series by Davonne Parks, author of Chaos to Clutter-Free. To view the rest of the articles in this series, go here.
Have you ever fumbled through your medicine cabinet, bleary eyed, late at night, searching for a fever reducer or pain reliever? I can relate! My own medicine cabinet used to be a mess – things were overcrowded, difficult to find, and half the medicine was expired. To solve the problem, I came up with a simple, easy-to-maintain system.
I want to share my system with you today in hopes that it’ll inspire you to take a few minutes this week to organize your own medicine cabinet!
Here are 4 Easy Steps to an Organized Medicine Cabinet
1) Circle expiration dates with a sharpie.
Take the time to check expiration dates on all of your vitamins and medicine. Properly dispose of old medicine and use a sharpie to circle the expiration dates on all medicine and vitamins that you’re keeping.
The black circle makes it so easy to see if your child’s Tylenol has become expired the next time he or she gets a sudden fever.
2) Organize medicine by person or by type of medication.
Here are the categories that we have:
- Children’s Medicine
- Cold, Flu & Aches
- Throat & Stomach
- Men’s Health
- Women’s Health
We include vitamins with our other medicine. Your categories may need to be different than mine, but having your medicine categorized will help you to quickly find what you need.
3) Use sandwich or snack bags.
If any medicine tends to fall out of its package or to leak, put it inside a zip-top sandwich bag! I do this with our sore throat drops and it keeps them from falling out all over the cabinet.
4) Label the organized categories.
Since ease-of-use is a must for having a good organizational system that lasts, take a few minutes to label each category with food labels or with masking tape and a sharpie. This way anyone in your family can find the medicine they need to find and can put it back easily as well.
If you have a lot of medication, having a plastic bin for each person or each category may be helpful as well – just write the category or person’s name on the front of the container and stack them up, like this one at simplykierste.com
And that’s it – if you follow these four simple steps, you’ll have an organized medicine cabinet that will serve your family well over the upcoming fall and winter months!
“A joyful heart is good medicine…” Proverbs 17:22, NASB
Personal Thought/Application Question: Do you have any tips you’d like to add about medicine cabinet organization?
Davonne Parks believes that your role at home is valuable and she wants to help you thrive in your environment. Click here to receive immediate access to the FREE printable library she created just for you.
My medicine cabinet is actually a shelf in my pantry. I have everything on a lazysusan so that medications don’t end up pushed to the back and forgotten. Nothing is more frustrating than running out to buy a medicine and then finding a full bottle tucked behind that you didn’t see.
I’ve wondered how well a Lazy Susan would work for medicine organization – thank you for sharing that it is a good thing for medicine!
I have all of our supplements and meds in labeled CLEAR containers. My labels are: stomach, pain relief, supplements, cold/allergies. I have a medicine container that I keep in my bedroom with pain reliever, a thermometer, ear drops, natural tummy settlers, calming tablets, and Hyland’s cold medicine in it so I don’t have to go searching for these in the night if a child needs them. We do use a lot of natural remedies and they are in the container that makes sense to me.
This is a great idea, thank you for sharing Kristi!
This might shock some people but you can use expired medication. It’s not going to hurt you it just might have lost some of it’s potency. I’ve used meds even a few years old and they’ve worked from fine to okay. I don’t necessarily recommend using meds that long but if your child has a fever (like your example) and your meds are a few days or a month expired, you can use it till you get fresh meds.
Kathleen, yes, I agree! My husband reminds me of that every time I try to throw out the expired meds đ