How to Organize your Medicine Cabinets


Being organized is great when you’re in a hurry to find something, and you know exactly where to go to find what you need. That’s the whole point of being organized, right? To give items a specific home, so you can locate them on a moment’s notice. So it seems pretty crazy to me, that some of the absolute most important items in our home, were a disorganized, chaotic mess. Yep, our first aid kit and medicine was in a jumbled heap stuffed inside a cabinet.

Tummy ache? Oh wait here for 20 minutes, while I look for some Pepto Bismol that is probably crusty and expired.

Finger gushing blood? Just put some pressure on it while I frantically search for a bandage that is probably going to be way too small for your wound anyways.

You catching my drift here? Sure it’s okay to have a junk drawer here and there, but it’s probably not the best idea to completely disregard important, lifesaving items.

A messy cabinet makes it hard to find medicines or essentials when you need them.

Here’s a pretty pic of the underside of one of our sinks. This doesn’t even give you the entire messy picture. I had great intentions to keep things organized with the little baskets, but as you can see it didn’t work out very well. So I came up with a new (very easy!) solution.

Clear shoe boxes are great for organizing your cabinets. Earlier this year, my mom completely purged her entire home. Like every single drawer, closet, nook and cranny was cleaned out and items were donated. Not only was that good for me because I got to take home some of her unwanted items, but I also noticed that she had so many empty containers that were no longer housing her things. While in her closet (not slyly taking any clothesโ€ฆI swear!) I saw a big pile of clear shoe boxes. After getting rid of dozens of pairs of shoes, Jan said she had many of these boxes left. I scooped up 4 and thought that maybe this was the ticket to an organized bathroom cabinet.ย 
Label each clear shoe box and organize medicines into each section accordingly.

As with any organization project, it got worse before it got better. I took out every single thing from inside our bathroom cabinets and took inventory of what we had. I bid farewell to old, expired meds and grouped items together. In the end, I came up with four categories for our cabinets.
A cold, flu, and sinus bin with medicines makes it easy to find what you need.

Since I wanted this project to be over as quickly as possible, I didn’t spend too much time crafting up ahhhh-mazing labels. Instead I typed up a few labels in word, printed them out, and slapped them onto the clear bins with washi tape. The tape added some color, yet I could still easily read each category on the bin.

Add labels to your clear boxes with a list of medicines on top.

Then for extra credit, I taped a yellow notecard to the underside of the lid again using washi tape. I then wrote out a running list of all of the items inside that particular box. This is great for those tricky times when you need some sort of medicine fast, and you’re not 100% sure if you have it on hand. This was also very helpful for me, because I made a list of all of the things that we probably should have in those boxes, but didn’t. I then headed to the store to make sure we had a well stocked “pharmacy” of meds for just about every mild sickness.

I plan to also write the date of purchase next to the item on my list. That way I’ll know when I need to toss some of the items within that bin.ย These labeled, organized bins make finding toiletries or medicines easier. It took me hardly any time at all to get these bins under control and neatly put away. Now I’m just waiting for the first “emergency” in our household. Headache, tummy ache, paper cut? Don’t worry, I’ve got ya covered!ย casey_sig

 


The Year of Casey

Hey there!

Iโ€™m Casey Finn, the voice behind The DIY Playbook. I’m a Chicago gal teaching you how to design, DIY, and maintain your home…by yourself! Learn more about me right here.