Recently, my 5-year-old son was sick with a migraine (seriously no fun) and I had the joy of searching through our medicine cabinet at 1 a.m., looking for the Children’s Tylenol. I was surprised at how many bottles of medicine we had accumulated, so the next morning, I cleaned out the cabinet and reorganized all of the medicine in preparation for the next 1 a.m. Mommy Call.
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| My medicine cabinet before. What a mess! See, even professional organizers have messy spots in their homes! |
Here are my best Do’s and Don’ts for getting that medicine cabinet organized:
Don’t store medicine in the bathroom. Find a cupboard or drawer in the kitchen instead. Some people also use their linen closet to store medicine. Bathrooms can get too hot and humid, which can chemically alter the medicines, making them less effective and causing them to expire faster.
Don’t ignore the expiration date on your medicines. You can usually find it printed on the bottom of the bottle, near or on the cap, or on the label itself, if it’s a prescription. Toss anything past the expiration date. Even sunscreen, vitamins and skin creams have expiration dates. Check them all.
Don’t forget to put child-proof locks on your cupboard or drawer, if you have little ones at home.
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| Whew! That’s better! The stair-step shelf organizer makes a huge difference. I put all of my son’s medicine on the front row, where it’s easy to grab and go. I used a little box to store the bandages and a jar to hold the ointments and creams. |
Do purchase a stair-step organizer to sit on your shelf in your cupboard for all of your medicines. This inexpensive device keeps bottles from being hid behind layers of bottles. You can see everything with one glance. It’s a must-have!
Do consider storing all of your vitamins, bandages, and First-Aid stuff with your medicine in a general “health” zone in your cupboard.
Do group all of the medicines together into “zones”. This mean, you store all of the stomach/digestive medicine together, all of the cold/flu medicine together, etc. Think of how a grocery store organizes medicines and divide your medicine into zones accordingly. This is the secret to finding the Children’s Tylenol quickly in the middle of the night!
Love it! Your before picture is seriously a carbon copy of mine. Gonna work on this soon. Thanks for the tips!
Very good tips-having an organized bathroom can definitely change the look and feel of your space.
@ Elizabeth: All it takes is a fight between you and the hubby at 1 a.m. over where the Children's Tylenol is and who used it last and whose fault it is that it's lost to get that motivation going … Thanks for the comment!
@ Olivia: You're right about how having an organized space makes it FEEL differently. We want our spaces to look good, but to also feel good, and organization is a key factor in that. Thanks for reading and commenting!