Specialty Closet Organization - Medical Supplies

Closets are one of my favorite spaces to organize. They're tiny, contained microcosms of our lives. The possibilities are endless: coats, umbrellas, shoes, off-season clothes, holiday decorations, toys, memorabilia, kid's clothes, general storage, books, office supplies - any number of things remembered and forgotten.

Excess medical supplies and old supplies that were no longer needed made the closet too full. It was difficult to find what was needed or to determine current inventory.

The final solution. Hooks inside the door hold their medical backpacks, freeing up shelf space. The bins and baskets mean everything is easily accessible with room for shipments as they arrive. All expiration dates face toward the door, so that anything that expires can be readily discarded.

C.S. is a mother of three girls with chronic pancreatitis, a progressive condition that prevents their bodies from properly absorbing nutrition through the food they eat. The youngest drinks prescribed nutrition shakes to supplement her diet. The other two receive the bulk of their nutrition through feeding tubes. They receive shipments every three weeks of nutrition shakes, formula, bags, and a variety of other medical supplies. This mountain of supplies needs to be stored in a way that allows daily access, a quick view of the inventory when the call comes in to reorder, and an easy rotation of stock when shipments arrive.

Medical supply overflow stack up in the hallway.

More medical supply overflow stacked above the washer and dryer in the laundry room.

When I arrived, C.S. had a closet full of medical supplies that had spread out into the hallway and the laundry room. Her kid's prescriptions had recently changed, and she was storing both old supplies that she could no longer use and new supplies as they arrived. She was buried and her busy schedule afforded her no time to sort through the boxes, organize the closet where the supplies were stored, or to donate the supplies her family could no longer use.

The first step was to take everything out of the closet and pile it onto the living room floor along with the overflow medical supplies from the hallway and the laundry room.

Various medical supplies of different shapes and sizes needed to fit into the closet in a way that was easy to access on a daily basis.

The first step was to understand how the closet was used. How the supplies where used. Which supplies were new and which could be recycled or donated. Then we emptied the closet completely along with the boxes stored in the closet and in the laundry room. We disposed of expired supplies, donated what we could, and organized the remaining items that the family actually used. C.S. hates looking at the cardboard boxes. So, while we originally used the boxes to organize the closet, once we knew the system worked, we traded the majority of the boxes for fabric bins and baskets.

Too many items in two small of a space can make it diffficult to find what you're looking for, essentially making it difficult or impossible to use the space effectively.

We initially organized the closet using cardboard boxes so that the space could be used for a few days to determine whether any changes needed to be made before purchasing baskets or bins.

C.S. hated the look of cardboard in her closet, so we replaced several of the boxes with baskets and fabric bins to make it a more appealing space.

Now C.S. can easily access supplies on a daily basis when needed, ordering supplies is as simple as walking to the closet and quickly looking over the shelves, and the prodcedures we developed for C.S. to deal with shipments ensure her hallway and laundry room are medical-supply free.

​
Happy Organizing!

Would you like to live a more organized life? Contact me today to get started!