It's odd, some sort of bureaucracy getting in the way for sure.
Can buy box of aspirin no problem, trying to find individually wrapped aspirin or any unitized medication, no chance.

Where are you based? In Europe, you generally get the medication in blister packs, which you can cut/tear into individual packages.

UK. Yeah, but have to ensure labelled with expiry etc. More convenient if in a satchet. It's odd that water tablets usually come packaged this way, but otc medication isn't.

Normally every two years I look at the kits and every four or five I rip them back apart and rebuild and update them

Time to repack the car kit; and move over to water proof packing for the smaller ones.

If you check with your Pharmacist, you can find out how early you can reoder a medication. In my case, I can reorder two weeks before the script runs out. By doing this consistently, I can build up more than a months supply. IMHO, we're facing a recessio or worse.

I already have a year's supply of some medications and getting close to that with other prescriptions.

Jeanette Isabelle

I just scrounge small plastic bottles (usually from a super small sized bottle of aspirin, Tylenol, etc.) And I refill those from my larger at-home stock. They're fine for a year (probably much longer).

After I've decided they're starting to get old, I take out the meds and put them back at home labeled "take these first". Then I refill the little bottles from my at-home stock and put them back in my mobile kit.

Half the time I forget to do the yearly refilling. But you know what? Five year old Tylenol works just fine for me. Same for Advil. I rarely take aspirin, and at five years old it's definitely smelling vinegary, but it will still work and isn't going to hurt you. Just consider your five year old 325mg aspirin tablet to be effectively a 315mg tablet. Good enough.

This is not good practice for prescription meds that are sensitive to dosage, or that degenerate quickly. But for over the counter meds? Home rotation like I do above is just fine IMHO.

If you're worried about it, you can probably buy a whole bottle of 100 aspirin to drop into your kit, and that would cost about the same as a miniature foil-pack of four aspirin. Those little packets are not exactly cost efficient...

with some practice you can vacuum seal a strip of meds, and then cross seal them as individual tabs with a vacuum sealer