The Medicine Box Clutter Remains Provisionally Approved
Nobody reads the medicine box until an emergency. During an emergency, nobody can find the medicine box.
Incident Report: Medicine Box Clutter
Incident Type: Emergency medication search, household setting Duration of Incident: Fourteen minutes Status: Resolved, pattern unchanged
Summary
At 9:47 PM, the subject experienced a mild headache and required paracetamol. The medicine box was accessed. The paracetamol was located at 10:01 PM.
Timeline
9:47 PM: Headache begins. Box retrieved from shelf. 9:48 PM: Box opened. Contents assessed. Orientation required. 9:51 PM: Three strips of unidentified tablets examined. Not paracetamol. 9:53 PM: Expired antibiotic course, partially complete, found and placed to one side. 9:55 PM: Loose blister pack with no label found. Placed to one side. 9:57 PM: Second box found inside first box. Contents also unclear. 10:01 PM: Paracetamol found near bottom.
Contributing Factors
The governing rule: a medicine box clutter may not be removed until every resident agrees it has no hypothetical future use. No item has been confirmed to have no hypothetical future use. Every item has a theoretical future use. The expired antibiotic course might be needed if the same infection returns. The unidentified tablets might be useful if someone remembers what they are.
The box contained seventeen items. Three were useful. The other fourteen could not be discarded because their expiry date might be wrong, meaning they might still work, meaning discarding them would be premature.
Current Status
The box has been returned to the shelf. The loose blister pack has been placed on top of the box, where it will remain visible and therefore addressable, until it is placed back inside the box during the next reorganization.
A future cleanup will create a formal appeals process. The cleanup has not been scheduled. Everyone recognizes the medicine box clutter as temporary. The box was this way when the current residents moved in.