Tutorial: revolving door calendar

Okay, my door doesn’t revolve, but now my calendar can! I had a bare door just eight feet from my desk that I wanted to use some how. I decided I wanted a really big calendar so I can easily see an overall view of several months at a time. The extra bonus is that now my family can see everything too.

Originally I just stapled my calendar pages to the door. That worked great until it was time to remove a few months and rotate the calendar. It was ridiculously hard to get those staples out. Regular scotch tape didn’t work well either because the pages kept falling off. I looked into the idea of using bulletin boards, but I decided the cost was too much for the size I wanted. Instead, I decided to go magnetic. I started by mounting two 24″ by 36″ sheets of galvanized metal that I got from our nearby big box hardware store. Each one cost under $10. At the same time, I picked up some inexpensive 1/2″ disc magnets.

Because I was impatient and DH was busy, I mounted the sheet metal with some really strong double-sided tape that was left over from our daughter’s wedding. This is the kind of tape that is used at convention centers when they need to temporarily secure rugs in place. It’s super strong, but also removable. I got it from findtape.com. I decided it would certainly hold long enough until DH can get out his handy dandy drill and put a few screws in place.

I wanted my pages as big as possible, so I used Microsoft Word to create my calendar. I’m very familiar with the program so it took very little effort. I’m sure you can find calendar templates online, though. I formatted my calendar to use legal-size (8-1/2″ x 14″) paper. When I put two months side-by-side, it extends a couple inches beyond the 24″ wide sheet metal, but I haven’t found that to be problematic.

I love how easy it is to move around the pages now! And it’s really nice to sit at my desk and be able to see all of the things I have scheduled. If I added one more row at the bottom, I could see an entire 18 months at one time! That’s still so weird to think about. The first time someone asked about scheduling a workshop in November 2011, I originally thought they meant 2010. It took a bit of time to sink in that they were talking about more than a year away! Now I have something scheduled into 2012 – that’s really weird 🙂