The calendar inside the pantry door

The inside of the pantry door is the most read surface in the house. It opens a dozen times a day, at eye level, and whatever is taped there gets seen without anyone deciding to look at it. That makes it the right place for the dates a household keeps forgetting, which are never the frequent ones.

A wall calendar fails at this. It shows one month, so a date eleven months away is out of sight until it is next week. A phone reminder fails differently: it fires once, gets dismissed, and the thing it was about has not been done. A card that lists the whole year at once does neither.

What goes on it

The chimney sweep. In Sweden two separate visits come out of the same chimney. How often a flue is swept is decided by the municipality. The fire-safety inspection, the brandskyddskontroll, runs on intervals set nationally by the civil defence agency, Myndigheten för civilt försvar: every three years for a wood stove in regular use, every six for one lit in short spells once a week or less. The sweep plans the round area by area, which is what keeps the fee down, so the household does not choose the day. A notice announces it, and the date goes on the card the afternoon it arrives.

Other countries keep a tighter clock. In Poland the national fire-safety regulation requires a flue serving a solid-fuel stove to be cleaned at least once every three months while it is in use, which on its own would fill four lines of a card.

The car. Transportstyrelsen sets the inspection deadlines for an ordinary car: the first no later than 36 months after the month it first went into service, the second within 24 months of that, and after that no more than 14 months between inspections. The agency’s e-service shows the date for any registration number. The card gets the last permitted month, and the month before it, in pencil, as the time to book.

The insurance. Home insurance renews once a year and rolls over on its own. The line on the card sits a month before the renewal, which is the only time comparing it with anything else is worth the bother.

The heat pump. Its service comes at whatever interval the installer’s manual asks for, and it is the date most easily lost, because nothing goes wrong for a long time if it is missed.

Debts paid in one go

Monthly bills on autogiro can be left alone, since the bank pays them and the statement shows it. The card on the pantry door is for everything that arrives once, on a date that will not come round again. A debt repaid in a single sum is the plainest example. A short loan arranged through Wandoo in Poland is paid back with one transfer at the end of the term, so its date goes on the card the day the agreement is signed, with the amount beside it, and stays there until the transfer has gone.

The reason is in the shape of the debt. An instalment reminds its owner every month, because it turns up on every statement. A sum repaid at once sends no reminder at all until the day, and on that day it asks for all of the money. So a one-sum debt is not a bill. It is a date, and it needs a second line a week earlier, the day by which the money should already be in the account.

How the card is laid out

Stiff white card, cut to the width of the door panel, twelve rows ruled across it, one per month. Each line carries three things: what it is, the date, and the number to ring. Pencil throughout, since dates move.

When something is done it is crossed out, and its next date is written straight into the right row, three or six years on for the inspection, fourteen months on for the car. That is the whole method. In January the card is copied onto a fresh one, and anything still crossed out is left behind.