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Last updated on July 25th, 2024 at 08:23 am
During a whole home consultation, I had a client tell me, “The only thing we’ve done the right thing organizing is our medicine cabinet.”
I’d disagree that that was the only thing they did right, but they definitely did have their medications stored correctly. With all the little kids they have in their house, they have medications stored out of reach. Each bin was labeled for mom and dad to find exactly what they needed.
Sometimes when I look in my own medicine cabinet, I’m surprised to see how many medications are expired. On one hand, maybe it’s good there’s so much because that means we weren’t as sick as often.
On the other hand, now we have to do something about all those expired meds.
Here’s a resource on where to properly dispose of expired medications and safely store others in your medicine cabinet.
Storing Medications
Keeping medications safely out of reach is important. We keep ours in an upper cabinet in the kitchen.
We keep the medications we take daily in a tiered turntable. Just next to it, we keep a basket of large bottle medications that don’t fit as well on the turntable.
We use these handy budget bins (which I talked about here) to store things that are hopefully infrequently used. All the stuff that is meant to fight a cold.
I’ve seen people using either the baskets or the bins to store their medications, and we happen to use a mix of both (because that’s what was lying around).
Cleaning out the Medicine Cabinet
Step one in cleaning out those medications is to take everything out of the cabinet.
Next, remove anything that is expired. Set those to the side ….we’ll deal with them in a minute.
Then start categorizing your meds by type (like cold meds, kids medications, vitamins, etc), or how often they are used, or both.
Now sort all your categories in bins or baskets that can be easily removed from your cabinet when you need them.
I got my baskets from the clearance section at Marshall’s and the bins from Walmart. You can also find budget-friendly organizers at any dollar stores and, everyone’s favorite, Target.
How do you safely dispose of medications?
The FDA has guidelines here for safely disposing of medications, which includes mixing them up with coffee grounds, but not all can be thrown away this way.
I went ahead and found a few places where you can safely dispose your medications below:
Walgreens
Some Walgreens’ have a “safe medication disposal kiosk” where you can bring prescription meds, ointments, patches, over-the-counter meds, ointments, patches, and vitamins for disposal. Use this link to find out if there’s one near you.
CVS Pharmacy
CVS has a tool on its website for finding places to safely dispose of medications (find it here). Just plug in your zip code and the distance and hopefully a few addresses in your area will pop up. The first one that came up in my search was a police department.
Police Stations
Some police stations will have certain days of the month where they collect medications for safe disposal. Call your local department’s non-emergency line to find out if they do.
NABP
The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy also has a drug disposal locator on its website. It includes all the pharmacies and police stations that permanently collect.
Sharps Disposal
If you have sharps or needles to dispose of, there’s a website for that too (thanks, Google!) Find a safe location to dispose of sharps, plus get specific info on your state’s guidelines.
It seriously sounds like a lot of work, but it’s worth it to know no one is going to get their hands on something they shouldn’t. I’m pretty sure most of us went through all those drug free programs at school to know what’s up.
Organize your medicine cabinet
So, it’s time for you to get your medicine cabinet safe and organized. All you gotta do are these 3 things:
- Keep it out of reach
- Sort by use or type
- Safely dispose of expired medications
Make sure to pin this for later!
I like your suggestion to sort our medicine cabinet with categorized bins or baskets so we can remove and access any items we may need. My husband and I are shopping for new fixtures for our home’s master bathroom, including new faucets and a large medicine cabinet we can use. Thanks for teaching me the best way to keep the medicine cabinet organized and tidy after it’s installed!