The things we store. You might store some keepsakes, maybe some fishing trophies, maybe some ceramic figurines, and probably definitely some food. You might store books, or maybe your grandmother’s hand embroidered napkins, or your father’s woodworking tools. We T1Ds store supplies, some of them sharp and needle like, some of them not, some liquids, and all of them necessary. So what on earth does T1D have to do with storage? A lot actually! You see quite a few of us receive our prescriptions from medical supply companies and they come in a 90 day supply. Which all means BOXES, boxes of test strips, boxes of infusion sets, boxes of reservoirs, boxes of iv pre pads boxes of batteries, boxes of alcohol pads, and boxes of CGM sensors. Where do we put all of those boxes? There is a joke in the T1D community about their “diabetes cupboard”. Yes folks this takes up at least a whole cupboard, or a cabinet stand, or set of drawers. In addition to all the supplies, we also have to store our insulin in the fridge. Again some of us get 3 month supply, and if we loose power, you guessed we are SOL. Again a reminder, if insulin is refrigerated it is fine for over a year or the expiration date, but once it is room temperature it is only good for 30 days AND cannot be refrigerated again because if it is it will kill the insulin and therefore not work at all. So a lot of us store generators… just for our fridges. With that insulin we all need syringes for back up, just incase our pumps weren’t working and we need to do a manual injection. For those T1Ds that don’t use pumps, they usually use insulin pens, which need refrigeration and pen tips, which are little syringe tips that screw on to the tip of the pens. These usually come in a box of 100. We also store extra lancets for our glucose meter, and also an extra glucose meter or 5. If we have had more than one pump, we only get new ones every 4 years; we store those as back up pumps. Also, even though they are completely functional you can’t give them away… which is the most fucked up thing in the universe. Seriously, I have tried. So I have 3 old insulin pumps that work just fine just sitting in my house with a total of value of $20,000 but since I can’t give them to someone else to use, they are only valued as a back up pump. No I can’t sell them, because they are life saving medical equipment. Back to storage, we store extra charging cables and plugs for our pumps, CGM receivers, and last but not least we store all of our used needles and syringes, aka sharps. Why do we store our sharps? Well we don’t store them forever; we just can’t throw them away everyday because it is a HUGE liability and biohazard. If a garbage man was pricked by used needles, it would be a huge mess, plus a horrible day for the garbage man! So we have to store our sharps in a sharps container until it is full and we can dispose of it property. So yes I have a container of used needles in my house all of the time. Just so you get a concept of how many we go through. A T1D that used syringes or pens would go through around 7+ a day. Also we are supposed to change our lancets every time we check our BG.. or once a day… most of us are bad at that. We can’t throw the old lancets away because they are tiny needles. I change my infusion set every other day and that includes 2 needles, and a cannula that was in my body. Also the CGM is changed once a week or 10 days and that is a huge ass needle. Needles to say we store a lot of sharps. One more thing we get to store is paper work from our appointments and bills for our taxes or for reimbursement from the underinsured program if we are eligible. Yes! This.. is.. so.. much..stuff! So, if you get a nicely wrapped present packaged in an infusion set supply box this Christmas, you will understand why.