Organize your First Aid


Organize your First Aid

When it comes to First Aid, the FH family could easily open up its very own pharmacy. From the copious amounts of Tums and Zantac I took for stomach ulcers, to the smelly ace bandages my husband uses post-basketball practice, to the four anti-itch lotions I bought for ONE mosquito bite, to every form of pain killer – because clearly to only own the options of Advil and Tylenol would never suffice, I can openly call myself the equivalent of a medicine cabinet hoarder.  The most ridiculous part is that although we own everything you could dream of, every time I need something, I can never locate it. Is the advil in the medicine cabinet or in the kitchen I always ask. Or, I would head to CVS to buy bandaids and then come home and find we have 2 boxes. It seemed economical and time saving to finally get organized. So I went to the container store and bought a 2 drawer plastic bin. Why plastic? Because if any of the medicines spilled, I could just wipe it down. Or if someone with a bloody hand {the reason for a bandaid in the first place!} reached in to grab one, it could be sanitized in a snap. I also liked that the drawer fit perfectly on a shelf I had in my linen closet {pure coincidence!}. Now onto the steps I took to consolidate all of my products into a small organized space…

Step 1: I divided the items into 2 separate drawers. One drawer was designated to injury and first aid – anything for cuts/bruises/sports injuries, pretty much anything topical. The second drawer was for all liquid and pill medicines.

Step 2: To make everything easy to find in drawer one, it was necessary to stack everything in an orderly row with the boxes facing upward so I could see what was inside. I even arranged the bandaids from the smallest size to large bandages. I machine washed and then rolled up my ace bandages and then neatly fastened them with their secure clip. If anything was too ratty or missing a clip, it got thrown away. I also took this opportunity to throw away anything expired.

Step 3: In my medicine drawer, I organized my medicines into clusters. In the very front I kept my most commonly used ones like Tylenol and Advil. Then in the back I did cold medicines in one area, allergy medicines in another, and so on.

Step 4: Lastly I labeled the bins so if anyone needed something they would know exactly where to go! Now fingers crossed I don’t have a reason to head back to this cabinet any time soon!

Organize your First AidOrganize your First AidOrganize your First Aid