Most households end December with either far too much or not quite enough, and January is the one month when you can see clearly which it was.
An hour now sets up the whole year. Here is the order to do it in.
First, count what is actually there
Not an estimate. Open the closet, open the boxes, and write down what is in the house.
Two things usually come out of this. People find more than they thought of one item, because it was bought twice in a hurry. And they find something at the back that has been there long enough to have gone past its date, which is worth checking now rather than discovering in June.
Anything past its date goes. Anything unopened and fine stays, at the front.
Then work out the real number
December is the honest month. Holidays, visitors, a disrupted routine, more help in the house or less: whatever you went through in the last few weeks is closer to a realistic high than a quiet week in April is.
Take what you used, divide it into days, and you have a daily figure you can trust. The full method is in how long should a case last, and it takes about a minute.
Then set the amount you want in the house at any one time. For most households that is a month of supply plus about a week, which is enough to absorb a delay without filling a room.
Check the things that quietly changed
- Has anything changed about the person you buy for? A new medication, a hospital stay, more or less mobility. All of those move the daily number, and a figure from last spring may simply be wrong now.
- Is the product still right? People stay with a size or an absorbency level long after it stopped fitting, because changing it feels like a decision. If something has not been working, January is a good month to deal with it.
- Is your delivery schedule matching your usage? If boxes are piling up, the schedule is too frequent. If you are running out before the next one, it is not frequent enough. Either is a two-minute fix.
The new plan year
If you use an FSA, a new plan year usually means a fresh balance, and the start of the year is a far more sensible time to use it than the panic at the end.
Our FSA and HSA eligible section has several hundred products, and the rules on what counts are in IRS Publication 502, with the basics explained more gently on Healthcare.gov. Your plan administrator is the one who applies them, so check your own plan's rules on deadlines and carryover now, while nothing is urgent.
Keep the itemized receipts as you go. Reconstructing a year of them in December is the single most avoidable job in this whole area.
Set it up so you do not have to think about it
If your usage is steady, Autoship, our automatic delivery program, sends the same order every one, two or three months and saves 5% on eligible items. You can skip a delivery, change what is in it, or cancel, from your account or by emailing us.
If your usage is not steady, a schedule is the wrong tool and the counting method above is the right one. Both are fine. Picking the wrong one is what causes the closet to fill up.
Either way, free shipping applies on orders of $75 or more, which is worth knowing when you are deciding whether to split an order or combine it.
A sensible January order
Cover the gap between what you counted and what you decided to hold. Nothing more. The most common January mistake is ordering as though the shelf were empty when it is not, which is how people end up storing four months of something they use twice a week.
Start from incontinence care or nutrition and feeding, and use the one-minute method above to set the quantity. Questions? Email support@savemedical.com.
The short version
Count what is in the house. Use December to work out your real daily number. Hold a month plus a week. Throw out what has expired and put the new stock behind the old. Check the plan year if you use an FSA. And match your delivery schedule to the number, rather than the other way around.
