Scheduling medications is important and yet frustrating. There is the problem of where to put your prescriptions, and how to keep track of what you took and when. Hopefully you don’t need regular medications, but sooner or later, everyone needs to track and organize their medications, a family member, or pet.
Taking prescriptions on time and correctly for recovery or health care is difficult.
Personally, I try to take every dose by the prescription to get off the prescribed medication ASAP. But if you don’t feel well, it’s easy to miss a dose, mix medications, or misplace them.
About 75 percent of patients (and 50 percent of patients with chronic diseases) fail to adhere to or comply with prescription medications, according to a report from CVS that I received in 2017.
Tracking Pill Doses
For many years now I have been giving medicine to my lover, Nina. You take one medicine by mouth every day, one every other day, weekly fluids (injections), and antibiotics and ointments. There’s a lot to keep straight, so I check the doses on a spreadsheet in the kitchen. A visual checklist in a place I see every day works for me. Here is a copy of that medication tracker spreadsheet, which you can download and customize for your pets or people. (Check your downloads folder after clicking.)
When I was diagnosed with chronic anemia, I was given two vitamins every day to take for the rest of my life. Then came five more medications following my foot surgery. For two weeks, I wrote down what I was taking four times a day because there was no way I could keep it in my mind. I highly recommend a simple AM/PM grid pen and notebook like the one below. I kept the medicine and the notebook on my chair at our table. Knowing that it was only temporary, I was less concerned about how it looked and more concerned with managing the pain.
Here’s a simple grid I drew on Nina’s single sanitizer box. Drug scheduling doesn’t have to be trendy to work.
What can make medication planning easier?
Order pharmacy tablets: If you like the convenience of online shopping, you’ll love that Amazon is now in the pharmacy business, and that they’ll package your daily medications in 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 like the idea of getting pre-packaged daily doses of maintenance medicine if it makes life easier. But I don’t like the claim that “I don’t have to think about my medications now,” as stated in their marketing video. Call me crazy, but I think it’s a good idea to think about medications every time you take them.
There is also a fair amount of waste in the pre-packaged system. If you add or remove medication during a cycle, you will need to adjust the packets manually. I would like to know from those of you who use PillPack to organize medications. Does it work for you?
Organize your pills into doses in blister packs that you fill at home: If you like the prepackaged idea, but are a DIY-er, maybe this pill blister pack option from PillThing.com works best for you. Thanks to NAPO member Carrie LaCroix Pan for bringing this to my attention. I LOVE this solution because once it’s filled out, it’s easy to check for compliance. Each dose has a date, and the medicine may or may not be in the blister.
Can dosing be good and fun? A friend shared with me some lovely pill organizers from Dosey (at Dosey.com or Amazon). If you are highly motivated by beauty, you will probably like this content. But I see a big red flag in the weekly compact because it has an open face. I am assured, I will give up the compact completely and distribute all the pills during the week I carry them. The flower-shaped twist&stack compact eliminates large spills, but seems difficult to load. For my money, I like this zipper bag with slide closure bags (affiliate link).
Scheduling medication by month at a time: Recently I have been working with a client using this pill planner for 4 weeks. The young man had never taken regular medicine in his life, and now in his seventies, he had to remember to take one pill every day. Except the pill was for a worsening memory condition. You see the problem, right?
It seemed simple, but we couldn’t arrange the Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4 labels on the pill case with thirty-one calendar days and thirty-day pills that were refilled mid-month. We customized it by adding durable stickers to each room, and it all came together. But asking someone who is already at risk of dementia to self-diagnose medication is cruel. We’ve added reminders for when to call for refills and when to pick them up, too.
Looking at this box of tablets from Amazon, we found it difficult to fit into the compartments of the two middle rows. You will also need a second tray if you need to take AM and PM medications. Here’s a 1-31 + am/pm pill tray set that doesn’t require additional labeling.
However, I’m not a fan of fancy monthly pill boxes with individual compartments sticking out of the main body. I have seen many internal parts disappear, and you have to buy a new gadget to make it work.
Scheduling medications with apps
There is an app for your pharmacy: All major local pharmacies now have a smartphone app to help with digital medication ordering. Walgreens and CVS have them, but so do independent pharmacies through their distributors like the Good Neighbor app.
There are apps to remind you to take your medication: Your phone or smart watch can be great for reminding you to take your medication or self-administer tests like blood sugar or blood pressure. But don’t expect older adults, people with dementia, or those who are seriously ill to use it themselves. What may seem simple to you can be confusing to set up and difficult to understand when the alarms go off. Back in 2017, I found the iOS app MediSafe, and it still seems to be an option. Here is the link to the Android Medisafe app. Every major tech company seems to offer a medical tracking app, so look around if this one doesn’t do what it needs to do. Please leave a comment below if there is a medication-specific app you like to use.
Track your medication and spending history: Many people still don’t know that you can track all your scripts and receipts through your pharmacy, which is an incentive to stay with a pharmacy or two. To get a tax and expense account refund, you can ask your pharmacy to print a report of all your medications and expenses each year. It’s so much easier to have that information in one place, cutting down on a lot of paper clutter.
Where to Store Your Medicines: Hide or Show?
Are pills taking over your kitchen counter? One of my senior clients who was moving into an assisted living facility kept a kitchen cabinet free of charge for her medication so it wouldn’t sit out on the counter. He thought prescription bottles might make him look older.
Placing pills out of sight may sound neat, but the best medicine organizing solution is the one you’ll use, and that may mean keeping your medications visible. Free up counter space by using spice racks or step risers designed for small bottles, and don’t be afraid to keep them on the counter if that’s the way you’ll remember to take them.
Clear bins like these keep bottles sealed and make them stackable. You can use bins to separate his and hers, or prescriptions and over the counter medications, or those that require refrigeration, for example.
This Susan with 2 tiers for storing pill bottles would work very well in an eye-level cabinet.
But before you buy anything, I’d like to see you look around your home for something you already love to store and organize medicine. You probably have a beautiful basket, bowl, or covered dish already in your home. Use something you already have to organize the medicine and hide it in plain sight.
After my surgery, I emptied all my pill bottles into a nice disposable clay bowl that we usually use for stuffing.
If I have forever more bottles, I would look for a covered container that can serve as a base for my table. This green casserole dish with a lid is delicious. 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 organized just for your medications and tracking checklists, and get rid of random clutter. Or use something that fits well with your medication. A single pill bottle is neatly hidden inside my favorite cream.
If you run a chronic condition in your family, I’d love to hear if you use one of these solutions or what you prefer to plan your medication. Please leave a comment below.
Disposal of Medicines
One last important note…when it comes time to get rid of your medications, please do so responsibly. There were no good solutions. We used to flush the tablets down the drain, but now we know it’s not really good for our water supply and our environment. Then we only had one day to bring drugs back into the country every year. Now, many communities have landfills so that medicines can be disposed of safely. If pills are littering your home, contact your local police department or pharmacy to find the nearest drug disposal facility in your area.
