Yes I do like to keep my Medicine Cabinet organised so that I can get things quickly and easily.
It is probably one of the best organised things in our home.
But then that kind of storage space is one of the things I enjoy working on when it comes to Organising my home.
I didn't always have a medicine cabinet so I had to think of other easy to get at and easy to keep organised places.
In one house we used part of a vanity unit in the ensuite
and
in another house we used a couple of shelves in a kitchen cabinet
but this time when we moved back to Northern Ireland in Dec 2010 we moved to a house which had a medicine cabinet over the wash hand basin in the back toilet.
Yes a real medicine cabinet just like I always saw in the films and TV programmes - you know they are tall and shallow out from the wall with a mirror door.
Now if this had been our main bathroom I suppose I would have been tempted to think I would need to use it for Bathroom things - but it is in the back toilet. This is the small room that is off the utility room and I really think it would have made more sense to use the space as a pantry or large storage closet (because you can never have too much storage space and I do not have enough storage space).
We have an ensuite off our bedroom and an ensuite off the guest bedroom as well as the main bathroom so let's face it this back toilet is never really used as a toilet and who wants to have to clean 4 bathrooms and toilets when mostly there are only two people in the house? - NOT ME!
Anyway back to my Medicine Cabinet which makes me happy again.
Twice a year I do an overhaul of this cabinet
and because I do it regularly you can see it is not in bad order.
Firstly
I check all the dates of the medicines etc. and throw out the ones that are past their date.
(NOTE: A doctor did tell me once that many medicines can be used for up to 6 months after the date written on them but that it is definitely okay to use them up to 3 months after the date.)
I used to have to literally check each packet for the date every time I would do this but now I use my "Things" app on my ipad to keep a note of the expiry dates (typing these into the app when I put the product into the Medicine cabinet) so I only have to go into the app & use my tag of "medicine cabinet" and I get the list and the dates all in one go.
These will each show in my Todo list 14 days before they are up so I normally will be ready and throw them out as they expire and don't even have to do it all at the overhaul.
Secondly
I do an inventory of the cabinet.
I have the list of all the items I like to keep in stock, shelf by shelf
I had used ( my other beloved iPad app for making lists) the "Pocket Lists" App for making a full list of everything I would like to have here and because I did it shelf by shelf it makes it really easy to go through.
Which means that now each time all I have to do is tick off all the things I can see on the shelves and whatever is left unticked is obviously missing. This is due to not knowing when the hubby finishes off something or just something being taken out and not returned.
This happened with the scissors - to cut a long story short they ended up in a bin at a foreign airport.
Thirdly
I make a list of the things that will need to be replenished soon.
In my "Things" App I made a Project list and it just gets changed each time.
Well the list here is not too long this time because on one of my last trips to the chemist I knew roughly what was getting low so had already got some things.
Forthly
I tidy up what is in the cabinet and decide if I want to make any changes to the position and order of the items.
Sometimes there are different things that have been added if someone needs to have a new medication or you decide to start taking a new vitamin etc.
So the finished cabinet was just a little more uncluttered than to start with and neater.
Of course the few spaces you see will be filled up when I go and get that list of items next week.
You know when you have a cupboard you can easily fill it?
Well I have done that of course and then needed more space so I had to use part of the vanity unit below.
Mostly the things here were really the items that were too large to put in the shallower medicine cabinet or would not sit so well piled up on a narrow shelf so I would have needed another location for them even if the medicine cabinet wasn't filled up.
So bandages etc. in the left hand drawer, extra cotton buds and hand sanitizing wipes in the right hand drawer and the larger heating pad and creams in the right hand cupboard.