What I do about pill organization and consistent maintenance.

I would like to share what I do about pill organization and consistent maintenance.

I started out using the "day of the week" organizers pictured, which are sold in drugstores. That worked for a while, but I found that my memory of what medicines I take began fading because each pill was no longer identified, and when it came time to re-fill the organizer I no longer could remember what pills to put in it. It became a sort of blind mess. In addition, the compartments full of unlabeled pills made it difficult to give myself advance warning as to what meds were running low enough to require ordering refills

So I experimented with other systems and eventually bought a small Lazy Susan from Amazon, plunked a spare coffee mug down in the center and put the original dispensed vials in a circle around it, but then I had to deal with the problem of forgetting where I stopped if I was interrupted or distracted while fulfilling this regimen.

So then I took a marker and marked the top of each vial in the lazy susan with two things: 1) a short, unique three letter abbreviation for the contents of each vial, so I didn't have to constantly read the tiny print on the side label, e.g. "MET" for Metaprolol and "LIS" for Lisinopril etc.; and 2) a number indicating the order in which I had placed each vial in a circle around the lazy susan. That way, even if I became distracted or interrupted in the midst of taking my pills, I knew where I was and what meds were left to take, because I lifted each vial off the lazy susan and onto the kitchen table and didn't put it back until I had placed that pill in my mouth and removed the next numbered vial etc. etc. And the numbers enabled me to consistently take them in the same order each day. Keeping them in the original vials was very helpful to double-check the name of each medication if I forgot what the 3-letter abbreviation stood for, and also keeping track of expirastion dates, the dispensing pharmacy, and which doctor prescribed each med.

Perhaps this system would suit some of the other members as well.