What the deal with all that packaging! Medicines and supplements come with an extraordinary amount of packaging that they no longer need once those items get home. Remove all that at once and make the product part of your home.
Medicines and supplements are usually found all over the home. New bottles, half-empty bottles, expired products, OTC stuff… Medicines and supplements take a lot of space in our home. It is hard to account for the meds and supplements on hand and even harder to track them for expiration and re-ordering.
Here are a couple of suggestions about the medicines and supplements we take and keep at home. Specifically, how to make more space when storing them and how to better track your supply and reordering process.
Simplify
Whether you get your medicines and supplements by mail or you pick them up at the store, you probably have an excess of bottles and extra packaging complicating your space.
Many medicines and supplements come with excess packaging. It is unthinkable having to go through it every single day to get your medicines.
Thus, it makes sense to strip your medicines and supplements from all unnecessary packaging as soon as they enter your home. Better be done with that at once!
Consolidate
Most supplements and medication bottles come half empty. How about consolidating all that product? Do so when the product is the same type, with a similar expiration date.
I have consistently decreased the number of bottles I get by half, by consolidating their contents. The amount of unnecessary packaging I remove is considerable. I gain amazing space in my cabinets just by doing this.
Allocate
Store ingestible medicine and supplements in a single place in your home, preferably in the kitchen.
The bathroom is a suitable space for therapeutic and medicinal products that are not ingested. These are products we apply to the skin, hair, nose, mouth, and teeth (both OTC and prescribed). This group includes items contained in a first aid kit, for example.
Having these two distinct categories of medication properly allocated and stored allows you to better track the product on hand. This also facilitates the management of prescription reorders with the pharmacy.
Finally…
It boils down to how diligent can you be at managing packages that enter your home and what you do with them, medication or otherwise.
