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!