Birthday reminders that work: phone, paper and one monthly habit

Why birthdays slip

Most forgotten birthdays aren’t unknown, they’re remembered too late: on the day itself, when a card can no longer arrive. The dates are spread across phones, an old address book and Mom’s memory, and a reminder on the morning is easy to swipe away.

In Google Calendar

1. Save the birthday to the person in Google Contacts, with the year if you know it.
2. Google Calendar then shows it every year; check that birthdays are switched on in your list of calendars.
3. Add a notification a week before and another on the day. If a birthday won’t take the notification you want, create it yourself as an event that repeats every year.

Good for: anyone who lives in Gmail and Google Calendar. Watch out: it only knows the people you’ve saved as contacts with a birthday.

On an iPhone

1. Add the birthday to the person’s card in Contacts.
2. The Calendar app picks it up in its Birthdays calendar.
3. Choose when you’re alerted in the Calendar settings, under Default Alert Times, for example one week before.

Good for: a reliable nudge on your own phone. Less good for: sharing with a partner or the kids.

A birthday calendar on the wall

A phone reminds one person. A birthday calendar in the kitchen reminds everyone, without anyone opening anything: you see next week’s birthdays today, and the kids learn when Grandma’s birthday is. The most useful kind has the birthdays printed in already, so they don’t get lost when the new calendar goes up, with how old each person turns.

If you’d rather do it once, a perpetual birthday calendar has no year and no weekdays, so it hangs for good. Because the age changes every year, it prints the birth year instead.

Allow time for the mail

A card mailed across Canada can take several business days, and longer in December or to rural and northern addresses. A week’s notice is the minimum for a card; two weeks if it’s going far or you still need to buy a gift.

The first-of-the-month check

On the first of each month, look at whose birthday is coming up, write the cards for the whole month and order any gifts in one go. It takes five minutes and catches what the reminders miss.