Setting up 2025 Calendars around the house

Now it finally feels like the new year

Finally, I’m back from my whirlwind vacation in Seoul and Taipei. The trip began around the end of December and I’ve only just returned home this week, which means that calendars and diaries around the house are still of 2024. My desk is also a mess, starting the new year with fresh piles of hauls from my travels. From the long list of chores and tasks I want to tackle since coming home, nothing feels more important than switching out all the calendars for the new year.

Other than new planners and journals, calendars are my favorite things to set up at the beginning of each year. Growing up in an Asian household, there are always large paper calendars that display seasonal fruits, or daily tear-away calendars that tell you the fortune and misfortune for each day. On mom’s table, there was always a monthly desk calendar from the local bank or insurance company, featuring famous artworks or local non-profit pieces. Don’t forget the small calendar by the bedside table, when phones weren’t as convenient as today, to mark down important birthdays or special occasions. Now that I’m an adult living in my own home, I’m still a sucker for having a lot of calendars around the house.

For me, calendars are not just a functional tool, it’s also an important accessory that enriches my lifestyle. Of course, you can use a planner or calendar to plan life’s schedule and events. However, based on the style and the type of calendars, I’m also setting up little nuggets of delight for the future, whenever I flip to a new page. Just thinking about the new illustration or image I’ll encounter in a future week or month makes me smile — I’m essentially setting up and preparing for happiness.

Wall Calendars as small art pieces

2025 will be the fourth year I use the calendar sheets by Cozyca, with illustrations by Midori Asano. Each page is printed using high-quality Van Nouveau paper, and it is recommended to frame them or display each month separately. I love seeing the whimsical and soft artistic style of the artist and how she interprets the seasons of the year. The artist spent years living in England, so her storytelling of each illustration embraces Western aesthetics with some cultural nuances from her Asian heritage. It’s a style that I can relate to, living in Seattle as a Taiwanese person.

The Sunday start throws me off a bit, but I mainly display it purely for decorative purposes in front of my desk.

A new favorite calendar of mine is Midori’s 2025 wall calendar — Sushi. It is constructed using Echizen (the highest quality paper manufactured in the Reihoku prefecture) and meticulous letterpress and printing techniques. Each month introduces a type of sushi in Japanese and English, and the details of the sushi are recreated using different embossing techniques. I positioned this calendar on the wall between the living room and the kitchen space. It’s a fitting calendar that’s interesting for guests as well.

Calendars for writing things down

Another Japanese illustrator I love is Natsuka Murata, known for her watercolor artworks featuring Shiba inus frolicking around food. For 2025, she collaborated with LOFT to create an exclusive calendar featuring the theme of “Sento”, or a public bathhouse in Japan. As some of you might know, I’m obsessed with the Japanese sento and onsen culture, so I immediately jumped at the release and asked a local friend in Japan to help me procure one.

I attached this calendar to the kitchen fridge so I can enjoy admiring the artwork every day while taking advantage of the spacious writing space to jot down notes about my dog’s vitamin and grooming routine.

As a person who craves the variety of life, I love a weekly calendar because it refreshes my desk more frequently than a monthly calendar. A.P.J. (or Art Print Japan) created weekly flip calendars that could be hung or sit on a desk, typically around a specific theme. Last year, I enjoyed a weekly calendar featuring all types of cream soda. This year, I picked one that introduces the world of Kissaten (Japanese retro cafe) by Rina Namba. The photographer visits Kissatens around Japan and captures its nostalgic elements through store decoration and its iconic menus.

The weekly calendar also has more space for me to jot down quick notes or important deadlines. I also look forward to discovering a new Kissa each week I turn the page.

Other calendars around the house

I couldn’t pass on a penguin-shaped calendar by artist Chiharu Sakazaki. This is the same penguin that is also known as Suica, a mascot featured in Japan Rail that’s also known as the contactless transit or payment card widely used in Japan. This is a mostly decorative calendar since there’s barely any space for writing. However, I love positioning it next to my plants, serving as a character in the tapestry of my home decoration.

I love eric small things and her whimsical stamp designs. This small and portable calendar features a deck of monthly pages, printed with letterpress with neon colors on heavy card stock. It’s the perfect calendar for the guest room desk, which hosts friends and family throughout the year.

On my recent trip to Taiwan, I picked up a humorous calendar by the creator @tonystan8787 on Instagram. The sheets are printed individually, and the back of each calendar page features the artist’s iconic humorous artworks. I like that the calendar highlights federal holidays celebrated in Taiwan. It also features the lunar calendar, which a lot of Taiwanese people reference for holidays and special occasions.

Finally, I remember swearing on The Stationery Cafe podcast that I will not purchase a daily rip-away calendar for 2025. However, I was in Seoul and this adorable calendar by an artist new to me immediately drew my eyes. It’s a collaboration item between stationery store One More Bag and artist Jychoi. I especially love the “ugly cute” style and couldn’t resist giving this calendar a try. It now sits on my work desk, bringing a little whimsical energy every morning. I’m going to resist the urge to “save the artwork for my journal” because that’s how I end up with two decks of unused tear-away calendar pages from 2024.

This is my line-up of calendars for 2025, and I hope you enjoy it as much as the Techo Kaigi article.

How many calendars do you have around the house?