I have no useful tips on the blister pack stuff, but here’s a neat hack for those double-capped ‘push down and twist’ type bottles:
Take a pushpin and stick it into the top of the bottle, anywhere within a half inch or so of the outside edge. Shove the pushpin in all the way – this will take some hard pressing – and it will pin the inner and outer parts of the cap together. Result: an ordinary twistoff cap.
BTW, to save effort, you can simply swap the pushpinned cap for the new one, each time you start a new bottle of whatever.
Oh, and I forgot to mention – if there’s an in-store pharmacy, you can take the hard-to-open bottle of whatever to them. Ask nicely, and the pharmacist will open the bottle for you and dump the pills into an ordinary brown plastic bottle with a pop-off cap. They did this for my mother (arthritis) for years.
Yeah, exactly how are those things supposed to open? It’s like “Tear this way for 3/8”, crease here, then try to follow the curved line, trying not to snap the pill in half."
Usually, I just grab the bandage scissors and cut straight through.
I stick the point of an ink pen or possibly my nail file, whichever is closest, through the paper side and make a slit, peeling never works. Add me to the Prilosec fan club. I keep a sheet in my purse, one on my home desk, and one in my work desk. It works as well as what my dr had prescribed but for half the price or better. The generic is good news, hadn’t heard before now.
I buy my ibuprofen based on the bottle - some brands have a great, large top that looks kind of like a big gear (I can’t describe it properly). I keep a couple of these old bottles in case I can’t find an easy open bottle next time - I just pour the pills from the crappy bottle to the easy open bottle when I get it home. If I’m feeling picky, I’ll write the expiry date on the bottle with a sharpy, but ibuprofen never lasts long enough to expire with me. Now, if I could just get my Pepto-Bismol in a proper bottle…
Except I don’t need a pen or file as I come naturally armed with sharp nails. For the silly blister packs (Zantac, I’m looking at you), I just stick a nail through the paper on the backside, rotate, and presto – packaging pwnage.
I tend to keep a supply of my various meds in a small knock box that stays in my bag. I used to have a weekly pill box but the knock box’s less bulky which I appreciate, and looks nice to boot.
I was JUST going to start a whole thread about Zyrtec. WTF? Like you, I usually just go for a scissors and try to not cut either the pill or my hand. And why in the first place do we need a separate individual matchbook-sized package for every single little pill? Is there not enough wasteful packaging in the world all of a sudden? It’s not enough I have to pay full OTC price instead of the prescription co-pay, I now have to have a box the size of a coffee mug to hold one month of pills!
Yeah - we’ve bought that (though at Giant vs. Costco) and it’s not a lot easier to open, though slightly fewer sharp edges. Of interest, the box size is exactly the same as the brand name… but the plastic strips are an inch narrower.
I googled “omeprazole alternate packaging” and came up with this site which seems to sell the stuff - imported from India - by the bottle, but I’m rather leery of purchasing from an unknown site over the internet even though googling doesn’t seem to show any bad reports about the place.
Yes, thank you. I pack my meds a week at a time in those daily pill boxes and it can take a long time to make it through the Zyrtec. Now I keep an Xacto knife on my desk and try to buy it by the bottle.
But while we’re at it, let’s take down the generic steri-prep packs too! During the last bout of bronchitis I broke or crushed half the tablets getting them out of the blister pack. Geeze those things are nasty if you don’t get them all swallowed with the first gulp of water!
Yep. I buy Wal-Green’s brand of benadryl for this exact reason. The regular benadryl comes in 12 or 24-pack blister packs, the type that are paper and foil, which makes them doubly hard to open. Wal-Green’s generic version (Wal-Dryl) comes in 100-count bottles for a fraction of the price.
A tip for the child-resistant (nothing’s child-proof!) caps if you don’t need to worry about any kids getting into them. Most of these have a hard to turn initial twist followed by a normal, easy twist to get the top off the rest of the way. When you re-close the bottle, only twist it part way closed and stop when you hit the hard to turn section where the resistance goes up. Next time, you will only need to turn it through the easy part to open. For the “lign up the arrow” type of pop off cap, just leave the arrows permanently aligned all the time after the initial opening. (If you are going to put the bottle in a purse or luggage, you may need to close it tightly, however.)
My current pet peeve (ha, a pun!) is the packaging on my dog and cats’ flea medicine–Frontline is in such a secure package, not only do we not have to worry about kids getting into it, WE can’t get into it, at least not without scissors.
What’s ironic about that is that everywhere around here that sells the Prilosec, it’s always kept in a locked glass case next to the pharmacy!
Although now I’ve noticed at our local Kroger’s that their generic version is safely ensconsed on the regular medicine shelving…likely because it’s so much cheaper than Prilosec.
I think the Zyrtec packaging you are talking about (the single pill pack) is to make it pocket- or purse-friendly. Zyrtec is now available in my market in a generic that comes in a little bottle hidden inside a much larger box. I had thought it would be in a blister pack and was pleasantly surprised to find the bottle. I think I paid $9 for a 30 day supply of the 10 mg tablets.
Your rant is spot-on. It’s for reasons like that which made me give up and on tylenol and make me so happy to have found this wonderful product called HeadOn. All one does is simply apply directly to the forehead. Amazing!
HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead
HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead
HeadOn. Apply directly to the forehead