1984 Calendar. Photo Credit: Steve Mays
Ready to throw out your wall calendar from 2011 and buy a new one for 2012? Here’s another option if you’re resourceful and eccentric enough to try it: get an old calendar from 1984 to use for this year and save the 2011 calendar for 2022. In both cases, the dates will line up appropriately. You can consult timeanddate.com to find old calendars that will match up with a given year.
It’s a trick I learned from my grandfather who passed away last year. For those of us who don’t have a multi-decade stockpile of old calendars lying around, Wisebread.com suggests shopping for old calendars on eBay or Craigslist. My grandfather did it the old-fashioned way. He was a radiologist by trade who worked his way through school by working on farms. Farming had been a part of his life ever since, and he kept a gentleman’s farm in Ripley, NY. When he moved to an assisted living facility, my uncle took over much of the farm maintenance, but my grandfather would still go on excursions to do work on the farm until his last days. The calendar trick was a good example of his understanding that in a system like a farm, there is no waste – only resources. Also, it shows a kind of poetry that everything happens in cycles. In our day-to-day, most of us only conceptualize cycles of a week or a month or a year. But sometimes we recognize an underlying rhythm of a larger scale.
Through the years I have bought (and kept) some very beautiful wall calendars featuring mostly Japanese art and lovely gardens. They have become more and more expensive so every so often I will just use an old one from a previous year if the dates and days match the current year. Saves a bit of money and it also lets you enjoy again the beauty of the photos or prints.
For the year 2020 I will use two different calendars (because it is a leap year and will have an extra day). The calendars that partially match will be 2014 and 2009. I’ll use the 2014 calendar from January until the end of February (even though it will not have February 29). From March 1 to the end of the year, I will use a 2009 calendar.
I know I can get free calendars from the banks or very inexpensive ones elsewhere, but these are works of art so why let them go to waste when they can be reused? I’m looking forward to enjoying their beauty once again.