Life Hack: DIY mini-storage solution

You never know when you’ll need a small amount of something, like antibiotic cream, or salt, or medicine, or cooking herbs, or kindling, olive oil – even bullets!. Here’s a super easy way to have the exact amount you need, packaged individually, easily available and waterproofed super cheaply.

Remember, if you want to be able to see what’s in your drinking straw, package, get transparent ones. Don’t forget to label them if you can’t.

Antibiotics. Those drugstore mini-packs can be brutally expensive. And you need them in a purse, your car, your bug-out bag, your gym bag, when you go to the beach, on a hike, fishing or camping. Here’s how to make lots of small packages of them. Just take a straw and fit it over your tube of anti-biotic cream. Generic is fine. Squeeze. Fill the straw with the amount of ointment you need, then seal the ends by crimping while hot.

Crimping: Do this by warming the plastic quickly with a lighter and crimping with a pair of pliers. Naturally, you shouldn’t use you fingers as melting plastic is darned hot. And don’t use the lighter for so long you ignite the straw and its contents.

Bonus: You can also seal larger items, like those gel medicine pills which would dissolve or puncture if carried lose. Or sterile dressings. Or matches. Or exact doses of medicine, even liquid types. Use jumbo drinking straws like those used for thick shakes for larger quantities or bigger items. There are some great examples here.