Organizing your medication: half the battle

Sometimes my pills get totally out of control.  They’re  scattered between the bedside table and the bureau. I don’t have a sense of when I’m going to need refills.  I just take my nightly dose out of the bottle and stop using pill containers.

This is just a short post to say that, if you’re bipolar and on lots of medication, organizing your pills once a month or so is half that battle.
Organizing tips:

• If possible to get mail prescriptions (like medco) with your insurance (here’s hoping you have insurance), do it.
  Having a larger supply of meds just makes everything easier.  Less of a chance you will run out.
• Buy at least four weekly pill boxes (get them at any drugstore), and fill up for the month.
  This way, you will use that one chunk of time once a month to get all the drudge work of plunking pills into plastic boxes out of the way. Each night, all you have to worry about is having a glass of water, opening up the little compartment and swallowing.
• Put all the extra bottles in one designated place.
  A nice shoebox works. Or a smaller bureau drawer.  Lots of people still keep pills in medicine cabinets, but experts say that pills should not be kept there.

These are perhaps obvious tips, but when I first went on my medication, I would just keep bottle in my nightstand drawer–scattered–and when I get disorganized I sometimes find myself with drawers filled with pills as opposed to what I should have: neatly organized pillboxes, refilled every month.