Pill organizing/organizers: Good? Bad?

Another option is have your medication bubble/blister packing at the pharmacy. So all your pills are where they should be. No recognizing pill problems.
Take care,
Jake

Lots of good ideas here!
Between prescription meds and the over-the-counter items my MDs want me to take for my various diagnoses, I take a lot of pills daily. Some at each of breakfast (8), lunch (7), midafternoon (2), supper (4), and bedtime (5). I put a days worth of meds out in separate piles each morning. I then place each time’s pill pile in a small reusable ziploc bag called a “Pill Pouch” (2 1/2 x 3 inches - I get mine at Walgreens). You can write the time those pills are to be taken on each respective pouch with a marker so you don’t get them mixed up. If I’m going out during the day, it makes it easy to just grab the pouches needed for the time that I will be gone to take with me in my pocket or purse.

Which brings me to my second methodology. In spite of having all my meds organized, I might still forgot to take them on time, especially if I’m out and about. So, I’ve set up alarms on my cell phone for each of the times of the day that I need to take pills. I’ve selected pleasant sounding alarms so as not to irritate (too much) the company I may be with. The alarms are set to go off every day with the exception of one med which I only take 2 times weekly. For that med, I have selected on my phone which days of the week and time that alarm is to go off. It’s not uncommon for me to hit “snooze” if I’m right in the middle of something, and the alarm rings again in 9 minutes. For some people, this system may seem overly burdensome, and I understand, but I’m just glad I have a reliable tool to help me manage all my pills for all my diagnoses.

share my method

What Walgreens did was to just turn the tops upside down. Tricky, huh?! A tad awkward. Wasn't expecting that. Anybody else??

Wanted to add to all the earlier great suggestions as I also assist my husband w/his meds who is a stroke survivor of 20 yrs. He has two of the weekly plastic pill organizers you find at the usual drugstores. I try to allow as much independence as possible without hovering but in the past couple years I noticed a bit more forgetfulness and/or no awareness of the pills he needs to take in the AM and the PM-he would miss a pill or two. He was on top of keeping the pills straight and refilled for the longest time. Then he started refilling the boxes on odd days instead at the end of the week (Sat) but I would check discreetly all was in order until his organized chaos started driving me nutz! So I took pics of the pills in the organizers and blew up the pics so they easily show the color, shape, amount, etc of each pill and how many in each daily slot, taped it on the wall above his pill boxes (kitchen counter area). I also notated on the pics how many pills should be in each slot for his AM and PM organizers to reinforce the memory banks even though the pics indicate as such. We seem to be doing ok for now but I check more often to ensure he's got it right but this stuff happens as we all age, just a little faster when one has experienced a stroke...I'm not sure what we'll do when I start forgetting though, ugh! But pics help with annotations!