individual sealed ibuprofen & zyrtec

Today I made some individually sealed ibuprofen (Advil) and cetirizine (Zyrtec) packets:


I did it by cutting about a two inch strip of vacuum sealing bag, then doing several perpendicular seals far enough apart that I could pop a couple of pills in it.


Why bother? Mostly, I want to keep a few doses in my backpack / car, but don’t want them turning into dust. (The softer coat on Kirkland seems especially problematic.) The next best idea is of course just buying the commercial version, but I don’t really need 50 packets at a time. I’d prefer to keep more stock in the “more liquid” bottle form. Finally, waterproof can’t hurt!

I meant to do double seals, so it’d be easy to separate the cells. I remembered on the first seal, but then I forgot to do this on all the others. So I had to very carefully slice down the middle of the seal. This probably wouldn’t be sufficient for food storage, but it seems like it’ll be fine for storing dry pills.

I cut small notches on each packet so I might have a chance at tearing them open without tools. I cut the bag almost exactly the same width, but the Ibuprofen bags wouldn’t really vacuum because I put two Ibuprofen pills per slot. I had to settle for just sealing them.

It took about 10-12 minutes to do a row of 10 pills the second time I did it. I could probably get faster if I did it a bit more often. Cost calculations clearly reflect consumables only, and in particular don’t reflect the cost of the vacuum sealer and other tools.