Organize Your Medicine Cabinet

The average medicine cabinet is usually pretty small, but that doesn’t stop us from trying to fit everything we need for the bathroom in there!

Here are some ideas to help make that small storage space more useful and what to do with the items that simply don’t fit.

Toss what you don’t need

The first thing you need to do is go through the medicine chest and throw away anything that’s expired, old, broken, unused, etc. It’s a good idea to go through your cabinet every six months to see what needs to be purged.

Only everyday items

Don’t keep things in your medicine chest that you don’t need or use often. The convenience of a medicine cabinet is to easily access things you use daily.

Medications

Some medications don’t fare well in a damp and humid bathroom, so you might want to consider putting them in a kitchen cabinet. Wherever you store them, make sure they’re out of reach of children. I know first hand, kids CAN open child proof bottles! There are some cabinets on the market that have a lock built right into it.

Groups

Group like items together in your medicine cabinet. For example, put first aid items together, cold/flu/allergy medicines, digestive medicines, prescriptive medicines, pain relievers, nail care, etc..

Shelves

My cabinet only has three shelved areas, and they’re not adjustable! It can be quite frustrating. If your shelves are adjustable, great! While trying to stick to your groupings, also try to stack things of similar height on the same shelf. If you put a bunch of short things with tall things, there is wasted space above the short items.

If you’re in the market for a new medicine cabinet, check out Zaca Inc. The interior of their medicine chests include a patented modular shelving system. So tall things can stand next to short things and not waste space.

Organizers

Not all items come in a bottle that stands up. Some items require plastic organizers or small jars to keep things in order. Think about Q-tips, cotton balls, tubes of products and small things like tweezers, etc. You can find any number of small plastic or glass organizers to contain these small items and stand those small tubes upright. Check out the bathroom organizing products page for some helpful ideas.

Overflow Items

My first aid kit alone could fill up the medicine cabinet. So what I’ve done instead is to fill a shoebox sized clear container with a lid labeled “First Aid” and put that in the linen closet. It’s easy to access and contains all the band aids, ointments, etc. that might be needed in a quickie.

You could mirror this same idea with other excess items as well. Think about getting several decorative baskets and putting groups of items in each and storing them on a shelf in the bathroom. It would be functional and look nice! Or put items in clear containers, label them and put them in a closet nearby.

Conclusion

In the end, you want to have your daily items easily accessible in the medicine chest. Grouping similar items together helps you to find things quickly. Excess items need to be stored in bathroom cabinets or drawers or in attractive baskets on shelves, or in labeled storage containers in another closet or cabinet in the home.

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