Medicine Cabinet Organization

When my husband and I first got married, we had a handful of medicine for basic things like headaches, sore muscles, allergies, a bag of cough drops and cold medicine.  A single box of band aids lasted us a year or more and a tube of Neosporin was barely used in the same amount of time.  Fast forward almost 9 years and the amount of medicine we have has at least tripled if not quadrupled and I'm buying a new box of band aids every other month (more in the summertime) and of course my kids insist on "girl ones" and "boy ones".  Trying to find the right medicine in the middle of the night was starting to become a problem because everything was all over the place.  Can you relate?

As we started to accumulate more medicine, I knew that we'd need a good storage solution to keep things organized.  I found a little three drawer organizer at Walmart (similar) that was the perfect size to fit on one of the shelves in the hall closet.  When I originally bought it, I tried to group the same types of medicine together and put them in each drawer but things have gotten a little out of control lately.  Probably partially due to the fact that we've just gone through major cold season and have been in the drawers more often.  Whatever the case, our medicine needed some serious organization.

Here is a lovely (and somewhat embarrassing) before picture:

First thing I did was pull everything off of the top two shelves in the closet and put it on the kitchen table.  (I figured I might as well do a little organizing there since I was already working on the one shelf with the medicine.)  After getting rid of garbage and rearranging the rest of the items that needed to go on the shelves, I was left with the medicine drawers.

I emptied everything out and grouped it together into the following categories: allergy, cold, first aid, digestion and pain.  I also put all the band aids together and emptied the cough drops into three IKEA containers I'd originally bought for the pantry but have been sitting empty for the last couple of years.  (I knew I'd find a use for them eventually!)  I separated and labeled the different kinds of cough drops into: 1) sugar free cough drops, 2) regular cough drops and 3) sugar free throat drops.  I also had some baby/infant medicine such as gas drops and teething tablets and since I don't need any of those items right now, I put them in a small storage pouch I'd received at my first baby shower.

There wasn't really any method to which drawers I put the medicine.  I basically looked at what I had and found that I had a lot of cold medicine and not a lot of allergy medicine, so I put those in one drawer.  Digestion and asthma went in another drawer.  First aid and pain medication in the last one.

There are some people in my family *cough* my husband *cough* that don't always put the medicine back where it goes, so to help keep everything organized, I made some simple labels, which I placed on the front of the drawers. 

Once that was done, I put the medicine organizer back on the shelf with the cough drops and band aids.  I am SO happy to finally have this organized again.  It makes my organizing-loving heart go pitter-patter. *wink*

Click on the links below to see other ways I've organized my home:
Junk Drawer Organization
Multi Purpose Closet Organization
Craft Room Organization

Do you have a way to organize your medicine?  What are the most challenging things or areas to organize in your home?