Calendars are full of expiry dates that arrive too late to be useful. The passport reminder fires on the day the passport expires, which is nine months after the day it stopped being valid for most of the world. This kit fixes the one thing wrong with those reminders: it puts the preparation date in the calendar, and keeps the expiry as the second alert.
What is in the kit
- A checklist (below, printable) for gathering the household's dated documents and deriving a preparation date for each.
- A CSV template with the common dated documents as rows, the lead time for each type, and one worked example. Fill the expiry column; the preparation column is expiry minus lead time.
- The calendar export. A CSV cannot be imported into a calendar, so the document expiry tracker exists: type the same rows and download one .ics file with a preparation-day event and an expiry event per row, with alerts 30 and 7 days before.
Lead times by type, and why
| Type | Start preparing | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Passport | 9 months before | Weeks of processing plus the six-month entry rule most countries apply |
| Visa or residence permit | 3 months before | Renewal windows open 60 to 90 days out; a lapse is punished |
| National ID card | 3 months before | Appointment queues; used weekly |
| Driver's license, contract, subscription | 2 months before | Online renewal windows; notice periods of one to three months |
| Vaccination, prescription, pet vaccine | 2 months before | Appointments and multi-dose courses; kennels check dates |
| Insurance | 6 weeks before | Time to get one competing quote before auto-renewal |
| Vehicle inspection and registration, warranty, card, travel authorization, safety items | 1 month before | Booking slots, testing time, updating saved cards |
These match the lead times in the document expiry checker, which also carries the country-specific validity periods and links to the official source for each. The expiration dates checklist explains each row in more depth.
The passport row deserves its own paragraph
The worked example on the sheet has a passport expiring on 1 March 2027 and a preparation date of 4 June 2026. That looks early until you read the note: for a trip to Thailand, India, Indonesia or most of the Middle East, that passport is already unusable from September 2026, because those countries want six months of validity on the day you arrive. The passport six-month rule guide lists who counts what, and the passport validity calculator checks a specific trip. Children's passports last five years and hit the same wall twice as often; give each person a row.
Filling the sheet
- Gather the dated documents. The household inventory kit lists which ones have dates. Read the expiry off each document; do not guess.
- Fill the expiry column, one row per document and per person.
- Derive the preparation date: expiry minus the lead time for the type. The tracker does this arithmetic if you would rather not.
- Put the preparation dates in a shared calendar with a second alert a week before expiry. Whoever renews things in your household should see them.
- Print the sheet for the emergency binder, and update the row and the two calendar entries the day anything renews.
The automatic version
Every step above is a thing Paperlock does when you photograph the document: it reads the expiry date, it knows the type, and it reminds you 30 and 7 days before, plus six months before for passports and ID documents, once you have turned reminders on. The sheet remains useful for the documents you have not photographed, and as the printed backup that does not need a phone. The two together mean no date in the house arrives as a surprise.