Ultimate Calendar Hacks So You Never Miss a Thing

I don’t know about you, but I am super tired of missing birthdays, forgetting when I last changed out my air filters, and waking up each morning trying to remember what I have to accomplish that day. I constantly asked myself, “how do I stop forgetting things?”

If you are also tired of these things, fear not. I stumbled upon a life-changing hack that will help us both never miss a thing again. It will feel obvious after I explain it to you. But I had never sat down to actually follow the steps and after doing so, my life is forever changed.

Google Calendar

Start by opening up your Google Calendar app on your phone or on your computer. Okay so it doesn’t have to be Google Calendar, but I love Google Calendar so much. Most people I know have a Gmail account but if you don’t, you can use any digital calendar app.

The reason I emphasize using a digital calendar for all of the following steps is because of the automation. I love using the good old fashioned pen and paper for a lot of things in my life. In fact, I did a whole post on 5 things I moved out of the digital world and back into the physical. However, I always seemed to miss something with my physical calendar. With a digital calendar, we won’t ever miss anything again because the tool can automate these tasks and systems for us. And you’ll see, it’ll be a blend of digital and physical as much as you want it to be. There are some things I still enjoy writing down on my paper calendar, but here is what we are going to start using the digital calendar for.

Birthdays

Oh birthdays… we love them. But we also always remember them at the last second (or is that just me?). I had to figure out how to stop forgetting these things. I kept finding myself scrambling the morning of for a gift. Or just remembering the day before getting that card in the mail. WELL NO MORE. The first thing we are going to do in that digital calendar of ours is add everyone’s birthday in it. Now it doesn’t have to be everyone’s, but if you’re going to send them a text or give them a phone call or send a card in the mail, then mark it down!

The trick here is when you go to add in the birthday in the calendar, make it an all-day TASK.

The reason I love making these a task is because you can check it off when you’ve acknowledged that birthday with a text, call, or in-person drop-in!

The next thing you’ll do is make it a task that repeats every year.

Now “Save” it and sit back and cheer because you’ve just automated your schedule to ensure you never miss a birthday. But let’s take it one step further.

Birthday Cards/Gifts

For close family and friends who you send a gift or card to, go one step further and make another task that repeats annually one week before the birthday as a “reminder” task to purchase and send a card/gift.

Congratulations! You’ll now never be that person who forgets a birthday or sends that card too late.

Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly Cleaning Tasks

For all your weekly, monthly, and quarterly cleaning tasks, repeat the same process as above. I’ll leave it up to you for the weekly tasks, that you may prefer to track in your physical calendar or to-do list, but for me, the monthly and quarterly tasks are essential for this automated system.

Some examples of things you can begin to add in? Again, the things I kept asking how to stop forgetting. Cleaning out your refrigerator, dusting ceiling fans, washing pillows and blankets, descale the coffee maker, etc. Check out my ultimate cleaning guide for an even more comprehensive guide of what these tasks could be.

I love doing this because I’d never remember all of this occasional cleaning tasks otherwise. The more we can eliminate decision fatigue and that feeling of waking up and wondering what we have to do today, the better. Just make sure you put these tasks on different days so that several don’t stack up and need to be done at the same time.

The other awesome thing about making these tasks instead of events in Google Calendar is that until you check them off, they will carry forward. So if you didn’t get around to doing that cleaning task the day you marked it down for, don’t worry, the task will just move to be done the next day (or the day after that… or the day after that…).

Recurring Purchases

If you have something you know you need to buy every month or couple months, let’s add it into this system. For me, this is air filters, water filters, vitamins, dog food, etc. For you, it might be something else. Some companies will let you set up recurring “subscription” purchases on their websites (i.e. Amazon’s Subscribe & Save). For me, I prefer putting that control into my own hands and setting up my own systems to keep track, even if it costs an extra couple dollars. But if you like these subscription programs, go for it! Just make sure they are set up for the schedule that works best for your household and family.

Self-Care

I always seem to lose track of when I need to schedule haircuts for (for both me and my kiddos) and it ends up happening when the situation becomes desperate. So if you’d rather start tracking these sorts of “self-care” items in your calendar, go for it!

This could not only be haircuts, but could be doctor’s appointments, massages, nails, etc. Any of these that happen once every couple of months that you’d otherwise totally forget to schedule for yourself!

Prep for Holidays

I’m not including prep for vacation on here, but I am going to include holiday prep. Vacations may vary year-to-year (if you have very routine and recurring vacations, then you can actually apply these same tips to those as well!). But holidays happen at the same time every year (I don’t think you needed me to tell you that, though).

Depending on how your family handles holidays, sometimes maybe you travel for them but sometimes you always stay home and have the same couple of things happen. For us, we usually travel for Thanksgiving, but are always home for Christmas. So I know we always have a couple things we have to do leading up to these holidays. Whether it’s packing, wrapping gifts, finalizing menus or catering orders, etc. these are all great things to add into our Google Calendars!

I hope these tips help you as much as they helped me! I’d love to hear some other ideas if you begin to implement this and find other things that have helped significantly.

Happy planning!