Medicine Storage

Last Christmas, yes almost a year ago (can you believe Christmas is only 3 months away?! Me neither!!), while we were staying with my in-laws I got sick with a really bad sinus infection. It was not fun, but I got to see my mother-in-law's medicine cabinet and I was in awe. She had everything labeled neatly and divided up into categories. It was then that I knew I wanted to do that to our medicine. So now, about 10 months later, I finally have an organized medicine cabinet and I am pretty excited about it!! 

We have this awesome corner cabinet in our kitchen that has doors on both sides. It's about the only cabinet I like in our kitchen. It has always been the home to all of our vitamins and medicine, but it used to be really ugly and look like this:

With some inexpensive bins and a double-tiered lazy susan from Walmart, along with some washi tape labels, it's a whole new space!

Check it out!!

Here is the view from the back, this opens up into our eating area.

Here is what it looks like from the front, which opens up in the kitchen.

I put our most-used vitamins on the lazy susan for easy access each day.

 Washi tape has been really popular lately and there are so many uses for it, as evidenced all over pinterest! I learned about using washi tape for labels from the ever-famous and ever-wonderful iheartorganizing blog. Such a great idea! They are so easy to remove and change up.

I just sorted out all of our medicine and categorized them according to what we had.

My categories are:

Sleep Aids and Motion Sickness (I realize the way I abbreviated it on the label is kind of funny, but I wanted it to be shorter!)

Vitamins (These are the ones we don't use very often, but I can't bring myself to throw them away. YOU should always throw things away that you don't use, though! ;))

Eyes, Ears, Nose, and Throat

Tissues and Chapstick (We have about a million little packs of tissues and TONS of Chapstick!)

Fever and Pain

First Aid

Please ignore the fact that our white trim on the edge of the shelf fell off. I don't even know if it was there when we moved in or not. I didn't even notice until I was uploading the pictures. Oops. I know it looks super classy.

Am I the only one that didn't know that was how medicine should be stored??

I hope not. 

P.S. I am in the process of reorganizing my whole kitchen, so a kitchen cabinet tour will be up soon!
Be sure to follow and check back soon for that!!

Happy Thursday!! :)

Day 1: Drawer Order

Dresser drawers. Essential to store underwear, socks, under shirts, T-shirts, gym clothes, PJ's... but not my favorite storage option. They always get dishoveled because the things you wear most stay on the top and then everything underneath you never see and eventually everything just ends up in a wad. At least, that is how my husband's drawers usually end up. Oh and my favorite is when the socks get stuck in that space behind the drawer. That is always fun. Anyway...

 

Here are my tips to avoid disasters with drawers:

1. Purge often. Get rid of anything with holes, stains, anything that is stretched out, anything that you haven't worn in a year, that one sock (because the dryer ate the other one). You know, just simplify.

2. Categorize and color coordinate. It makes life a lot easier.

3. Drawer dividers. My new best friend.

Can be purchased here.

They work wonders. They are perfect for dividing wide drawers to store small things like socks and underwear.

4. I just found this tip on pinterest and it has changed my life. Okay, not really, but it has made it a lot easier to keep things looking neat.

 

Mine turned out like this:

The top drawer just has 3 dividers with underwear and socks... so I did not take pictures of those :)

 

The second drawer has my tank tops, cap sleeves, T-shirts, and PJ shirts. All categorized by style and color, with the long sleeves in the back.

 

The bottom drawer holds my PJ pants and workout clothes.

 

I love how much easier it is to find what I need and how much neater it looks!

One day down, six to go. I got this.

 



Small Space: Pantry

My husband and I live in a small condo with little storage area, so I have had to be creative with the space we have.

Here is how I have organized our laundry room/pantry:

This is also where we store our tools (what little tools we have!), our vacuum, and a laundry basket.

Wicker Baskets: IKEA (here), Mesh metal basket: Target (really old), Labels: Staples' Martha Stewart

 Collection (similar here), Clear containers: Wal-mart (here), Expandable 3-tier shelf: Wal-mart (similar here)

The top shelf holds our laundry detergent, dryer cloths, cleaners, and paper products. 

On the second shelf, I keep all of our snacks, with individual bars and snacks in the smaller basket and large bags of chips in the larger basket. The clear containers are great for nuts, cereals, and crackers. 

The bottom shelf is where I store all of our "cooking foods" and the 3-tiered shelf works great to see all of our cans and bottles.

My favorite part is the labels! I love them! They are chalkboard paper from the Martha Stewart office collection at Staples. An organizer's dream. Really, the whole line is so cute! They are stickers, so I stuck them to black cardstock and cut around the labels, then I used a small hole punch on each side, wrote on them with chalk and tied them to the baskets with red and white striped baker's twine. It was kind of a process, but totally worth it in the end!

I really wish I could have taken a before picture! It was all just shoved onto the shelves and I couldn't see anything. It is a lot more functional now! Not to mention, the labels really help my husband to put things back in the right places! ;)

What do you guys think? How do YOU organize your pantry??