The Do-It-Yourself Scheduling Hack that Saved my Relationship
As featured in The Elephant Journal
I had reached a new level of frustration. No matter how many times I told him, my boyfriend could not keep track of the times of our dates. A late afternoon brunch with friends on a Sunday was a 7 pm dinner that night. And a movie on the 10th suddenly became a movie on the 17th.
Initially I took it personally, then I started to see that it just wasn’t dates with me it was breakfast meetings with clients were construed as lunch dates and times to pick up his children were confused. He is so attentive to details when it comes to historical facts, sports trivia and cleaning windows of all things, but when it comes to time, he is like the absent minded professor.
We had tried google calendars, but with one schedule for work, one for his children and another for me, he was confused. I was determined to end these scheduling snafus, if not I was sure to lose my mind or throw him out a window. There was one thing we had tried when we were on vacation, a good old fashioned paper calendar. That week was blissful, he didn’t miss a single time we had scheduled to play tennis, go to a movie or a yoga class. That was it, all this time I had been taking the wrong approach.
Many of us are visual learners, in order for it to really stick in our minds we need to see it. Sure we can hear dates and times, perhaps even read them in an email, but unless we see them in on a grander scale - as an appointment penciled in an agenda or on a calendar it we lose track of it. Weeks can get juxtaposed and times of days mixed up.
Sometimes the paper calendar is cumbersome to carry, gets misplaced or simply needs to be reinforced. So a great way to keep all scheduling needs in order not just for ourselves, but for our significant others and our families is to create a chalkboard calendar. It is a fun do it yourself project.
white paint
chalkboard paint
masking tape
paint brush
paint roller
white paint pen
chalk
Go to a local paint store or a Home Depot to purchase both white paint and chalkboard paint. Chalkboard paint comes in a few different colors - slate grey, green or an earthy brown.
Section off the area that you wish to create your calendar with masking tape. Paint this area white using a paint brush or a roller whichever you prefer. Let the paint dry. If you are painting over a dark wall, you may need two or more coats of white. Now measure the size of the squares you wish to use for each day. If you want a 3 inch by 3 inch square, make sure to include the width of the masking tape in your measurement, because you will be using the masking tape to separate your day boxes. So starting from the edge of the masking tape you used to section off your calendar’s perimeters and assuming the masking tape is 1 inch wide, add 1 inch to the width of your box to make 4 inches in this case.
Use the masking tape to create a grid of boxes and a row at the top to write the days of the week. Paint over the masking tape grid with the chalkboard paint color of your choice.
Once it is dry, remove the masking tape grid lines and write in the days of the week with a white paint pen. Now you can pick up some chalk and start scheduling. We started this process about a month ago. We have it in a central location, the kitchen, we both look at it when making morning coffee or when grabbing something to eat at night. As we are unwinding from the day, we can ask questions in a calm relaxed manner about scheduling and since it is in front of us in a room where we both can see it we are reminded to make those changes to the schedule that came up during the day. And it is a great way for us to add new events, like concerts and movies that we read about and want to see. So instead of scheduling frustration, it is a way to manage time in a fun way.
If your man, is still missing dates, a fun trick and it works is to put SEX for every appointment regardless of what it is, it works like a charm every time.
