Organizing our First Aid Supplies

As part of my March Spring Cleaning Checklist, I organized our First Aid Supplies with 30 minutes and 4 easy steps!
Step One: throw out expired medications.
Step Two: get a container that maximizes the space you have to work with.
Step Three: corral tubes and smaller items in plastic cups so they don't get buried by larger medication bottles.
Step Four: label bottles and boxes so you can tell what they are from the top.
Ta-da! An organized First Aid basket!

We have a little cabinet above the toilet in our bathroom.


In there we keep all of our First Aid stuff (band-aids, medicines, etc.). 

But the First Aid basket was overflowing, and it was just a mess every time we had to dig through it to get something out.

So I set out to clean out the basket and figure out a better solution! The first step was to get rid of all the expired medications. I haven't done that in way too long apparently, because I found a bottle of ibuprofen that expired in 2008 (aka, two years before we even got married!).

After that, I consolidated things. We had about five boxes of Band-Aids, all half-full. So I piled them all into just two boxes, and ripped off the top cardboard flaps to make them easy to get to! 

I corralled all the little tubes and smaller stuff (gauze, alcohol wipes, etc.) in clear plastic cups. These sorts of things were always falling to the bottom of our old basket, making us have to dig for them and mess up everything us. But now they stay upright in the cups and we can easily reach everything! 


Most importantly, I found a new basket that would maximize the space on the shelf in the cabinet. It's a bit bigger than our old one (and doesn't have slopey sides that waste space) so everything fits nicely! There's even a little space to grow into! The plastic cups and all the medications went into the basket, and I was done! 

My favorite part of this little project is the labels on the medicine containers. I used the kraft paper stickers from Target's Dollar Spot and labelled each medication so we can easily see what it is from the top. No more fumbling around, pulling out bottle after bottle until you finally find the Advil!  Now it fits perfectly in our cabinet, and it's easy to use! Plus, we're no longer in danger of ingesting ibuprofen from 2006. :)