Storing Medical Supplies for Maximum Shelf Life and Efficiency

After you've been gathering medical supplies for a while, you come to realize that you need to store them properly and keep them organized so that you can find them when they're needed, and keep them out of the way when they aren't.

Like foods, all these medicines and supplies should be stored in a cool, dry, dark place.  But it doesn't mean they should be refrigerated or frozen unless otherwise indicated for individual substances.

Liquid medicines don't have a long shelf life.  That's why they are mixed from powders in the pharmacy just before they are sold to consumers.  Hydrogen peroxide has a fairly short shelf life.  Rubbing alcohol and Betadine, on the other hand, last indefinitely. 

Tablets and capsules store well; however, capsules must absolutely be protected from humidity or they'll just melt together into an unusable mess.

Any medications with the potential for abuse must be well-hidden.  All medications should be kept out of the reach of children. 

Plastic and latex products should be kept cool, dry, and dark to avoid melting and deteriorating.  The same goes for vinyl and nitrile gloves. 

Fragile items, such as glass thermometers and syringes, should be carefully wrapped to protect from breakage.  The same goes for wind-up watches.

The foregoing doesn't present much of a challenge.  It's the actual storage that becomes an issue for many.  After a while, you eventually have a lot of different items to store!  Because we prepare for a years-long grid-down situation for our large family, we have a lot of supplies.  It would be nice to be able to store everything in just a few totes.  However, in my experience using totes for camping supplies, they just don't keep out the dirt and bugs.  And there's no way I want to risk spoiling the medical items.

So I've opted to use six-gallon buckets.  Most of them have been fitted with red gamma lids for easy identification and access.  And while the six-gallon buckets are no longer favored in this family for food (because six gallons of wheat, beans, or rice is just too much for me to wrangle), they are perfect for medical supplies, most of which are pretty light-weight.  The buckets keep everything perfectly free from dirt, bugs, mice, and moisture.

Before going into the buckets, most items get re-packaged in Ziploc bags to keep them extra clean and get rid of the boxes.  It also helps to keep like items together for finding them more easily and rotating better.  Some buckets hold the truly-TEOTWAWKI-type items like sterile gloves, gowns, and towels, lidocaine powder, ether, and the glass thermometers and syringes.  This keeps these items out of our way until they're needed, which is hopefully never.  Other buckets are dedicated to just gloves, masks, or gauze.  Some hold vitamins, supplements, or OTC pain relievers.  And yes, we do have a lot of buckets.  We firmly believe in living a pain-free, happy existence as long as possible.

The buckets are stored in the basement where it is cool and dark and separately from the food so that they don't get mixed in and lost.  They are clearly labeled on the side with the exact contents to facilitate locating the unique and rarely used items.  While I would absolutely love full-size medical chests and cabinets, these aren't very portable or water-proof.  Buckets, on the other hand, are easily transported and keep all the supplies perfectly clean.  And they're cheap, leaving more money to spend on supplies.

25 august 2020