Seasonal Living
The September Anti-Reset
What if September doesn’t need a new you?
6 min read
“Maybe the most grown-up version of a reset is realising that your life doesn’t constantly need resetting.”
I love September.
There. I’ve said it.
January gets all the publicity, but September has always felt much more like a new beginning to me.
Fresh notebooks. Proper routines. The holidays are over. The diary fills up again. Suddenly everyone seems to know what day of the week it is.
And as someone who genuinely enjoys organising things, I should be September’s ideal customer.
Give me a planner and a quiet Sunday afternoon and I can reorganise a life that wasn’t particularly disorganised to begin with.
Which is perhaps the problem.
Because lately I’ve been wondering:
When did every new season become an instruction to become a new person?
September arrives and suddenly we need a morning routine.
A fitness goal.
A meal plan.
A skincare routine.
A reading goal.
A perfectly organised wardrobe.
A new productivity system to organise the productivity system we downloaded in January.
Apparently simply entering autumn as the same reasonably functioning woman who left summer is no longer an option.
And I am tired just writing that.
I Don’t Actually Want a New Me
This has taken me an embarrassingly long time to realise.
I quite like the current one.
She could drink more water.
She occasionally leaves clothes on the chair despite having developed multiple systems specifically designed to prevent clothes from ending up on the chair.
And she has been known to spend an unreasonable amount of time organising something instead of actually doing it.
But generally?
She’s doing fine.
I don’t need September to fix her.
The Strange Business of Optimising a Perfectly Good Life
I wrote recently about dolce far niente - the sweetness of doing nothing - and I keep coming back to it.
Because I am someone who loves structure.
I like things organised.
I like knowing what’s happening.
I like a good list.
I genuinely believe that getting the boring things in life under control creates more room for the beautiful ones.
That is, after all, a large part of why Beautifully Organised Living exists.
But there is a very fine line between organising your life and turning your life into a permanent improvement project.
And I think I occasionally cross it carrying a notebook.
There is always another thing we could optimise.
Sleep better.
Walk more.
Spend less.
Invest more.
Read more.
Scroll less.
Eat better.
Wake earlier.
Be present.
Be productive.
Relax properly.
Apparently we have now even managed to make relaxing something you can fail at.
Impressive, really.
So I’m Trying Something Different This September
No transformation.
No September Reset.
No New Season, New Me.
Instead, I’m keeping the me and changing a few things around her.
I want mornings that feel slightly less rushed.
I want to put my phone down more often when I’m having coffee.
I want dinner at the table instead of occasionally eating it while doing something else.
I want books stacked beside the sofa.
Candles on ordinary Tuesdays.
A kitchen that smells like something is baking.
Longer conversations.
Walks without measuring whether they were sufficiently productive.
Maybe a limoncello for absolutely no reason other than there is limoncello.
None of these things will transform my life.
That’s rather the point.
Perhaps We Don’t Need Another Reset
Maybe what we’re craving when we save all those September Reset posts isn’t reinvention at all.
Maybe we’re craving a change of atmosphere.
Summer can be wonderfully chaotic.
Plans. Trips. Terraces. Late evenings. Open doors. People coming and going.
Then September appears and suddenly there is something comforting about returning to yourself.
Not improving her.
Just finding her again.
The routines you actually missed.
The food you like cooking.
The people you want around your table.
The little rituals that make an ordinary Wednesday feel like your own life instead of something you’re racing through.
That is a reset I can get behind.
So This September, I’m Opting Out
I will not be waking at 5am.
Unless there is an airport involved.
I will not be completing a 30-day challenge.
I will not be reinventing my morning, body, wardrobe, finances, kitchen cupboards and entire personality before October.
I might reorganise a drawer.
I’m not a completely different woman.
But mostly, I want September to be about returning rather than becoming.
Back to evenings at home.
Back to cooking.
Back to books.
Back to proper coffee in proper mugs.
Back to the small things I somehow appreciate more when the days begin getting shorter.
Maybe the most grown-up version of a reset is realising that your life doesn’t constantly need resetting.
Sometimes it just needs living.
Preferably with a candle burning somewhere nearby.
Pair It With
- Dolce Far Niente
- Sunday Life Admin
- The Art of Pre-Autumn