Medicine Cabinet Organization

The one thing this house is short on is linen closets. When we moved in seven years ago there were two in the typical locations upstairs; one in the hall bathroom and the other in the master bedroom. We eliminated the bathroom closet to make room for a second sink, leaving only one teeny-tiny linen closet for our family of four.

Maximizing storage has been paramount with every renovation we've taken on over the years. So when we started planning our kitchen remodel, I thought over {okay, stressed over} how every cabinet would function before we placed the order. Like Mary Poppins leaping into the chalk painting, I'd close my eyes and visualize myself in the space.

An upper kitchen cabinet was the perfect place to store vitamins and some common over-the-counter medicines. It's much closer than the master bathroom medicine cabinet, and still out of the children's reach.

Let me take you on a shelf-by-shelf tour of everything I did to get it organized.

Since we use the vitamins daily, they went on the bottom shelf. To maximize space and make every item easy to access, I placed them on a lazy susan. I chose this 9.5" turn table by Oxo for a few reasons. First, it fits the shelf perfectly. Second, it glides smoothly when you spin it. And finally, it has a deep ledge that helps keep items from flying off. {It also has plenty of rubber feet on the bottom, so it sits evenly whether on a solid shelf, or the wire shelves in our pantry.}

On the second shelf I have another lazy susan for medications we use frequently, including the frequent prescriptions that are a part of life with school-age children.  The blue container to the left holds thermometers and medicine dispensers. We also have our first aid kit on this shelf for easy access.

The top two shelves are dedicated to medicines that we use less often, but still want to keep handy. I categorized these and put them in separate containers. We have:

• Digestion
• Cold/Flu/Sinus
• Pain & Itch
• Children's Meds

I chose these containers by Sterilite because they fill the space very well. In particular, I like that they are the perfect depth for a standard upper cabinet.