Gift Idea for Your Wellness-Obsessed Friend: Loba’s Chic, Designed-in-Vancouver Pill Organizers

Health and wellness can feel like buzzwords—something to sell the latest trendy herb that will be forgotten in a year. But despite Instagramification of personal health, a lot of us do take supplements (and vitamins, my favourites are gummy) or daily medication.

While struggling with fertility, Loba founder Kate Bouchard ran into a problem that us vitamin-takers can easily recognize: counter space. Sure there are old school pill organizers (I’m sure I have a half-full one somewhere) or you can pile all your containers in the corner of a bathroom shelf and then shove them under the sink when guests come over (guiltyyy)… but when they’re out of sight, it’s easy to forget about them, too.

The pill organizers that Bouchard launched with her Vancouver-based brand, Loba, are sleek, modern and pretty enough to display, even in the most minimalist of homes. “I find that when I have things around me that are beautiful, that I use them more, and it helps me create healthy habits,” she says.

But Loba’s organizers are more than aesthetically chic: they’re high-tech, too. You set a specific time via Loba’s app and though you do have to use your human hands to fill up the individual daily pill containers (which are significantly larger than those little plastic ones), the whole system lights up automatically when it’s time for you to take the medication. It’s a trick that Bouchard notes has particularly helped those in the neurodivergent community.

“I’ve learned a lot from our neurodivergent customer base about visual cues…it’s called object permanence,” she explains. The light from the organizers acts as a cue that won’t turn off until the task (of taking medication) is complete, which is a great way to remove some of the mental load we all carry. So, yes, having a pill organizer that’s display-worthy is a Wellness Girlie’s dream come true, but not having to wonder while you’re driving to work if you sleepily took your medication that morning? That’s the real gift here.