First aid kit, passport, shoes and rope for traveling

Every home needs a first aid ready to go. How to organise your medicine cabinet and first aid kit is mainly up to you and your situation but it needs to be clear, and easy. Plus every (adult) needs to know about it.

What medicine and first aid material do you have?

As with any organising project get all your medicines, Band-Aids, creams, etc. together.

How much do you have?
Do you need to keep it all in the same place?

Place items where you need them

Normally I am in favor for keeping all the same grouping items together but in this case, you need to focus on where and when do I need these items?

You might want to keep creams and lotions in the bathroom in their own container

Band-Aids and any first aid supplies need to be very easily accessible.

For us this means we have several locations:

Lotions and potions are person-specific and each family member keeps them in their room – next to their bed or in their bathroom drawer.

The actual location of the organised medicine cabinet and first aid kit in our home

Depending on your family situation you need to tweak the location of first aid items. With small kids clearly you would place this items up high. For me with older kits having a drawer – easy accessible is great as they can attend to most minor cuts themselves.

Type of first aid kits to organise

Organising first aid kids is important, for a long time I was not prepared with any first aid kit. This as I felt I had to set up the “perfect” medicine cabinet. The thing is if you have a number of key things that you will need 90% of the time you are still 100% more prepared that if you don’t have a first aid kit.

You can purchase premade first aid kits – for a while when money was very tight I couldn’t afford one. There is nothing against creating your own first aid kit (unless it is work and legal requirement related in which money should be a problem).

Even now when I purchase a pre-set first aid kit I would add Band-Aids and betadine as we need this stuff all the time.

Below I will talk through a number of medicine cabinets and first aid kits you can organise.

One:

At home
In the car
For outdoor activities
In the office

At home

We have a central drawer in our kitchen (the 4th drawer the one that is normally either empty or messy with nothing specific).

This drawer has all things we need in case of first aid, Band-Aids, betadine, gaze, headache tablets, antihistamines, etc. It has several containers to roughly group items overall you can find what you are looking for in 30 seconds and it has material that will help us in 90% of small first aid needs.

In the car

In this video, I show you how I set up my own first aid kit in the car. It has come in handy on several occasions. It is a nice feeling, that if there were to be an accident, I could help as a first responder and that I have some helpful gear with me.

For a hike

We do a number of sports and hikes so a small first aid kit for these outings doesn’t go astray. In this one, I include some other items like blister pads, and a pressure immobilisation bandage for snake bites. You would do anything to prevent getting a snake bite but if someone gets bitten better to have something ready.

In the office

Clearly, every office is required to have a first aid kit. Having read this article you might want to familiarise yourself with what is in there. Who is in charge of this? Are things still in date?
Again coming back to this perfectionism I rather have an “expired” Band-Aid than none when I cut myself.

Other things that come in handy in the office is having headache and allergy tablets which is the most common office “injury”.

How to organise your medicine cabinet and first aid kit in summary

I hope this article got you thinking about how to organise your medicine cabinet and first aid kits. This is one of these organising things you can make a start and keep on improving over time. It is like insurance, you don’t need it until you do and then you are glad you invested in it and set it up in the first place.

Happy organising.