Never Forget Another Birthday

Three pen-and-paper and six electronic systems for remembering birthdays.

Keep a Visible List of Birthdays

Visit a bathroom in a home in the Netherlands and you might find a good idea staring you in the face: a list of birthdays important to your host posted opposite the toilet. Why in that spot? To assure that it's viewed regularly. While you may not want to sacrifice your bathroom aesthetics for the sake of remembering key birthdays, the more often you see the dates, the more likely it is you'll remember them.

As founder and "Exalted Queen Mother" of the Red Hat Society, an international network of women over 50, Sue Ellen Cooper chooses to keep her long list of reminders in the kitchen, "I have a list of every significant birthday taped to the inside of my pantry door," she says. "It's impossible not to see those dates every time I open the pantry."

Whether it's inside a cabinet, on the refrigerator, or bookmarking a page in the novel you're reading, place your list in a spot where you are likely to view it every day and you'll always be aware of an impending birthday.