You may have read this title and are thinking to yourself “Avery, I am far from ready to think about fall!”
But then you see this beautiful image and go aaahhhh… fall. Okay hold on, I am slightly off topic. Why am I bringing up fall you ask? There is reason to the madness.
Summer is not over, I promise, but it is a good time to start to think about not only how to manage and declutter your fall and later months, but also how you would like your fall to look. I am going to go through each of these notions one by one, and show how decluttering can help.
Decluttering your Fall…and other organizational assists
Summer is a great time to ask yourself what you would like your fall to look like, and sometimes we need to look back to move forward. Think of some things that did not work well for you in the year gone past: were you too busy? Running from place to place, appointment to appointment with less than a second to spare? Or maybe the opposite happened: you could have filled your dance card a little bit more as you felt a bit too adrift. Did you register yourself for back to back mah-jong lessons in the fall and you really don’t like it at all? Perhaps something else would be a better use of your time. Conversely, if you have been itching to learn how to play chess, why not take the plunge in Fall 2024? Did you have a bunch of “to-do’s” that you would have really preferred “to-don’t?” Or maybe there were things that you wish you had gotten to, and you just kept on procrastinating and never got to them at all. Over and under scheduling is a fine art to be mastered, and it just takes some clear thinking to keep your schedule and time flowing freely. As we look back to schedules and other things that we wish had been different last fall, we can take some valuable lessons from them and perhaps set this coming fall straight. Remember this is not an activity that I want you to get bogged down in, we do this to create ease and clarity for the upcoming season. You may want to sit down and start writing down some of these intentions in pencil, to get the ball rolling; you just may find some or a lot of clarity.
The Look ahead
Now that you have taken some time to identify some of the problems you may have had last fall with regards to scheduling and commitments, we can move to the ‘look ahead’ and start to draw out the upcoming fall. When I undertake this activity, I start with the declutter: what needs to be removed from last year to this year? Where did I find my energy was wasted: what did I not enjoy…Those things I wave goodbye to for 2024. It could be anything from something at work that did not “work” for me, to spinning my wheels in some other part of my life - that is gone. Honestly, life is too short! Then, once I have cleared some space, I think about all of the things that I want to be there in my upcoming fall, and I happily add those in: activities I enjoy, work plans and projects that I am passionate about and want to continue, and even social plans that bring me joy: invite it all in.
Don’t you already feel happier? There is no reason not to have joy in each and every part of our lives, and there is no time for wheel spinning and dread. Cheers to a happier and clutter free Fall 2024!