Works-for-Me Wednesday: Marking up the mirror

It's Works-for-Me Wednesday over at Rocks in My Dryer. Shannon, our hostess, has a post on teaching kids to keep themselves entertained while enforcing a summer ban of "no screens" between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. (That would be no computer, television or video games, etc.) For other tips from other bloggers -- more than 60 already, and it's only noon my time -- click on her link and go to the bottom of the post.

My tip this week: We keep dry erase markers in the bathroom and whenever anybody takes any meds (other than their usual ones) they write the time, the medicine and the dose they took on the bathroom mirror. I mean anything: aspirin, allergy medicine, the works.

The main reasons are to make it easier to track when you can take a follow-up dose if you have to (who can keep things straight when they're sick?) and to help prevent taking a bad combination of meds. The back-up reason is that in case somebody takes a turn for the worse and help is summoned, the loved ones of the patient are spared the awful experience of having to answer the inevitable question "What has he taken?" with a whimpered "I don't know." After a few hours, whenever the med can safely be considered no longer a factor in further developments, just take a piece of facial tissue or toilet paper and wipe the message off. Works for me.