Organizing medications is essential and yet so frustrating. There’s the problem of where to put your prescriptions, and then how to keep track of what you’ve taken and when. I hope you don’t need regular medications, but sooner or later, everyone needs to track and organize prescriptions for themselves, a family member, or a pet.

Organizing Medications: Nifty Pill Solutions

Taking prescriptions on time and correctly for recovery or health maintenance is hard.

Personally, I try to take every dose by the letter to get off of prescribed medications ASAP. But if you aren’t feeling your best, it’s easy to miss a dose, mix up meds, or misplace them.

As many as 75 percent of patients (and 50 percent of chronically ill patients) fail to adhere to or comply with physician prescribed treatment regimens, according to a report from CVS I found back in 2017.

Tracking Pill Doses

I’ve been giving meds to my sweetheart kitty, Nina, for many years now. She takes one oral medication daily, another every other day, a weekly fluid treatment (using syringes), and the occasional antibiotic and topical ointment. It’s a lot to keep straight, so I check off doses on a spreadsheet in the kitchen. A visible checklist in the place I see every day works for me. Here’s a copy of that medication tracker spreadsheet, which you can download and modify for your own pets or people. (Check your downloads folder after clicking.)

When I was diagnosed with chronic anemia, I was prescribed two daily vitamins to take for the rest of my life. Then came five additional meds following my foot surgery. For two weeks, I wrote down what I took four times a day because there was no way I could mentally keep track. I highly recommend a pen and notebook for a simple AM/PM grid like the one below. I kept the meds and notebook at my seat at our table. Knowing it was only temporary, I was less worried about how it looked and more concerned with controlling pain.

Here’s a simple grid that I drew up on a box for one antibiotic for Nina. Organizing medications doesn’t have to be fancy to work.

What can make organizing medications easier?

Organize pills at the pharmacy: If you love the convenience of online shopping, then you are going to love that Amazon is now in the pharmacy business, and that they’ll package your daily meds in individual daily packages for you each month. I first learned about PillPack.com (an Amazon service) from my NAPO colleague Anna Sicalides.(In 2023, CVS discontinued their multi-dose packaging service called SimpleDose.)

I love the idea of getting pre-packaged daily doses of maintenance medication if it makes life easier. But I don’t love the claim that “I don’t have to think about my meds now,” as stated in their marketing video. Call me crazy, but I think it’s a good idea to think about meds every time you take them.

There is also probably a fair amount of waste in a pre-packaged system. If you add or eliminate meds in the middle of a cycle, you’ll have to manually adjust the packets. I’d be interested to know from you who are using PillPack for organizing medications. Does it work for you?

Organize your pills into doses with blister packs you fill at home: If you like the pre-packaged idea, but you are a little more of a DIY-er, perhaps this medication blister-pack option from PillThing.com works better for you. Thanks to NAPO member Carri LaCroix Pan for bringing this to my attention. I LOVE this solution because once it’s filled, it’s easy to check for compliance. Doses each have a date, and meds are either still in the blister or they aren’t.

Can dosing be pretty and fun? A friend shared with me the adorable pill organizers from Dosey (at Dosey.com or on Amazon). If you are highly motivated by aesthetics, you’ll probably love these containers. But I see a big red flag in the weekly compact because it has an open face. Guaranteed, I would absolutely drop the compact and scatter all the pills within a week of owning it. The flower-shaped twist&stack compact eliminates mass spillage, but it looks hard to load. For my money, I like this zipper pouch with slide-close pouches (affiliate link).

Organizing medications a month at a time: I was recently working with a client using this 4-week pill organizer. This gal had never taken regular medication in her life, and now in her seventies, she suddenly had to remember to take one single pill every day. Except the pill was for a worsening memory condition. You can sense the problem, right?

It seemed easy, but we couldn’t line up the Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4 labels on the pill case with the thirty-one days on the calendar and the thirty days of pills that she was refilling in the middle of the month. We customized by adding dated stickers to each compartment, and it all came together. But asking a person who is already cognitively compromised to figure out medication tracking on their own is just cruel. We added reminders on when to call for refills and when to pick them up, too.

If you are looking at this pill case from Amazon, we found it hard to get into the compartments in the two middle rows. And you’ll need a second tray if you need to dose AM and PM meds. Here’s a 1-31 + am/pm pill tray set that doesn’t need any more labeling.

By the way, I am not a fan of fancy monthly pill boxes that have individual compartments that lift out of the main body. I’ve seen too many interior compartments disappear, and then you have to buy a whole new gadget to make it work.

Organizing medications with apps

There’s an app for your pharmacy: Every major local pharmacy has a smartphone app now to help with organizing medications digitally. Walgreens and CVS have them, but so do the independent pharmacies through their distributors like the Good Neighbor app.

There are apps to remind you to take your medications: Your phone or smartwatch can be great about reminding you to take your medications or self-administer a test like blood glucose or blood pressure. But don’t expect aging seniors, people with dementia, or those who are very sick to use them on their own. What may seem simple for you can be confusing to set up and difficult to understand when the alarms go off. Back in 2017, I found the iOS MediSafe app, and it still seems to be an option.  Here’s the link to the Android Medisafe app. Every big tech company seems to offer a medical tracking app, so look around if this one doesn’t do what you need it to do. Please leave a comment below if there’s a medication-specific app that you like to use.

Track your medication history and spending: Many people still don’t know that you can track all of your scripts and receipts through your pharmacy, which is an incentive to stick with one or two pharmacies. For tax and spending account reimbursements, you can ask your pharmacy to print a report of all your medications and charges each year. It’s so convenient to have that information all in one place, reducing a lot of paper clutter.

Where to Store Your Medications: Hide or Display?

Are pills taking over your kitchen counter?  One of my senior clients who was moving into an assisted living apartment kept a kitchen drawer free for her medications so they didn’t have to sit out on the counter. She thought that prescription bottles might make her seem old.

Putting pills out of sight might feel tidy, but the best solution for organizing medications is the one that you will use, and that may mean keeping your medications visible. Free up counter space by using a spice rack or step risers specifically for smaller bottles, and don’t be afraid to keep them on a counter if that’s how you’ll remember to take them.

Clear bins like these keep bottles corralled and make them stackable. You can use bins to separate his and hers, or scripts and over the counter meds, or ones that need refrigeration, for example.

This 2-tier lazy-Susan for storing pill bottles would work really well in a cabinet at eye-level.

But before you buy anything, I’d love to see you look around your home for something you already love for storing and organizing medications. You probably have a cute basket, bowl, or a covered dish that already looks great in your home. Use something you already own to organize medications and hide them in plain sight.

After my surgery, I popped all of my pill bottles into a pretty ceramic serving bowl that we usually use for stuffing.

If I had multiple bottles forever, I’d look for a covered dish that could act as my table centerpiece. This blue casserole dish with a lid is cute. Just make sure it’s deep enough for your bottles.

The problem with bowls, baskets and trays is that everything gets thrown into them. Keep it designated only for your meds and tracking checklist, and put random clutter away. Or use something that is perfectly sized for your meds. One pill bottle is neatly hidden inside my favorite creamer.

If you’re managing a chronic condition in your family, I’d love to hear if you are using one of these solutions or something else that you like even better to organize your medications. Please leave a comment below.

Disposing of Medications

One last important note…when it comes time to declutter your meds, please do it responsibly. There didn’t used to be any good solutions. We used to flush pills down the drain, but we now know is really bad for our water supply and environment. Then we had only one national drug take back day every year. Now, most communities have drop-off points for medications to be disposed of safely. If pills have become clutter in your home, check with your local police department or pharmacy to locate the nearest drug drop-off location in your area.

Originally published 7-2017

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