How to Reset Your Life For fall
This post is a long one, but a good one! I’m talking about serious golden nuggets. The work I do with nutrition and health is important, but this is the foundation for EVERYONE and we can’t manage the chaos of home and health without it. So tuck in, grab a notebook, pen, and cup of coffee, and let’s get to work refreshing our house, our lives, and ourselves.
Growing up, I always felt like fall was a time for new clothes, a new approach to my schedule, and a new identity as I started a new school year. I still carry this into adulthood and feel like fall can be another “new year.” It feels like a wonderful time of fresh starts, new energy, and new perspective on our priorities as we come away from the energetic focus on summer and draw our energy inward for me.
One question I have been pondering in my life lately (and am always trying to answer for my nutrition clients) is, “how am I setting myself up for success?” Whether that’s my nutrition goals: do I have a meal plan, a stocked pantry and fridge, and meals outlined on our calendar. With finances, etc. For most of us, that means planning ahead.
But too often it ends there, with just a plan and not enough integrated action. I can dream all day about the meal plan I wrote down on pinterest. But unless I actually write out a grocery list, grab my keys, go get the groceries and have it organized, cooking the meal for dinner will never happen. If I don’t have the ingredients, how could I expect myself to magically pull together fish tacos out of thin air after a long day of work when I’m exhausted. I wouldn’t. I would convince myself we have to order take out and call it a day. I would be willing to guess that you would too.
So, what does it look like to set ourselves up for success in all areas of life? Okay, maybe not all… let’s just get the basics covered here. I’ve narrowed this list down to the fall reset I have undertaken over the past couple of weeks to feel refreshed and to set myself up to finish 2021 strong.
If you truly dedicate a few hours each day for the next two weeks (yes, I recommend doing it that frequently and aggressively), I guarantee you will feel refreshed, less-stressed and ready to tackle your goals as we move into the holidays.
I have narrowed the refresh categories into:
Home
Health, Fitness, and Nutrition
Self-Cate and Beauty
Time Management
Finance
My Fall Reset Checklist
(Scroll to bottom to download the checklist pdf)
For the Home
Declutter
Doesn’t it always start here? Clearing out the old always reconnects me with my motivation, intention, and gives me a sense of calm. We had just moved so I didn’t actually have a ton of things I wanted to get rid of. But I did go through my clothes and box up items that will not fit my baby bump anymore, cleaned out the trash, and a handful of things that have accumulated since we’ve moved. (I was surprised at how many free library books, etc. had already found their way into our home). Lesson learned here, it is always a good time to comb through our items, clean up the ones we care about and let the rest go. The energy in the house was refreshed immediately.
Deep clean.
This was key for me this year. Maybe it’s the pregnancy hormones, or maybe it’s that we live in an old house now but having a blank, clean canvas was a must for me this fall. I always love a clean house as the foundation to make me feel organized and on top of everything. Just like spring cleaning, I feel like fall cleaning is crucial. Plus, I always treat myself with fall/winter decor when I’m done. But I’m not allowed to decorate until I’ve deep cleaned!
Kitchen Reset:
For me, fall is always a time to look at the harvest. We used to live more in sync with the cycles than we have been able to the past two years thanks to pretty small housing and no yard for a garden. But this year, I was determined to bring back a sense of stocking up and bringing abundance into our house for fall. I also wanted to stock up on local, nutrient dense food for the winter in the little way we can in less than 500 square feet. Fall
Kitchen Reset Checklist:
Fridge, Pantry, and Freezer Deep Clean. Take everything out, wipe it all down, put back only what you want to keep and nourish your family with.
Restock your pantry. Make sure you have all of the ingredients you need to make healthy meals. Starting with a base of bulk beans, lentils, rice, spices, quinoa, and an assortment of baking ingredients if you bake. I always know I can wipe up a healthy meal on the fly and that is key to maintaining a budget, and eating good, healthy food. I have a pantry stocking list here that’s free to download. Please go get it, print it, and use it.
Seasonal food preservation/stocking. The easiest (and healthiest) way to bring local, real, and nutrient dense food into the winter is to buy produce at the seasonal farmers market and freeze it. Easy, quick, and there’s nothing like a fresh local strawberry in the middle of January. If you preserve food, it’s time to do that. We canned a bit this year, just enough to fill the small pantry we have and called it good. Even though we would love more, I know a fresh jar of apple butter over homemade bread when we have this baby in February is going to be heaven and definitely worth the time. Some simple foods to preserve and to buy in bulk before markets close are: potatoes, onions, acorn squash, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, peaches, pears, any seasonal meats or hunted meats for the freezer. Add on some of your bulk rice and you have easy, healthy meals always thirty minutes away.
Restock your fridge: If you do zero seasonal food preserving, that is a-okay my friend. It’s still a great time to restock your pantry, fridge, and freezer with the essentials your family eats the most. Don’t leave it to the chaos of Christmas when you have nothing but eggnog, gingersnap cookies, and leftover cheese dip to eat.
Health and Nutrition:
Meal plan:
Do I need to say much here? I talk about this all the time. I’m happy to make you one, for you to make yourself one, etc. But at the end of the day, you need a general outline for what you will and when each day. You don’t have to follow it to a T, but you need a plan and this is a great time to outline one for yourself. (Or e-mail me and I will take care of this and your training plan for you).
Exercise/Training plan:
Movement and exercise are essential for everyone, so take a second to map out your exercise goals and put them in your planner. Start with, “I would like to walk or workout three times each week and then literally schedule the space for it in your planner, get the resources you need, and then be ready to do it when the time comes.” For my athletes, it’s time to plan the next season of workouts. Fall is often a time of competition, so plan those in and enjoy the peak of your training. Also plan what your training progression or break will look like over the holidays so you don’t mindlessly skip workouts, or workout out too hard and miss your off season (you need that too).
Self-Care and Beauty
Refresh your beauty care products.
Go through your bathroom, toss the expired jars, and restock on your beauty care needs.
Capsule Wardrobe:
This needs a blog post or three of it’s own. But a capsule wardrobe each season is something I started to do when we lived in our tiny house on wheels back in 2015 and I have been loving it ever since. The biggest benefit here, besides loving my clothing and feeling good in what I wear effortlessly, is that it doesn’t take time to figure out what to wear AND I am put together (I.e. not wearing athleisure all day). Check out Jennifer Scott and the Daily Connoisseur for some great resources on how to create a capsule wardrobe for each season: https://dailyconnoisseur.blogspot.com/2021/10/fall-ten-item-capsule-wardrobe-core.html
Time Management and Work
Organize your schedule.
This is KEY to getting workouts, healthy meals, and water into my day as well as maintaining productive work hours while maintaining my health and self-care. If I had to pick just one thing to reset, this would be it! A new season, a new schedule. Essential. I use a time-blocking system similar to Jordan page because I hate having anything planned into my day, need freedom and flexibility, and want to do what I want, when I want. I also know, if I don’t have a schedule I end up working all day, neglecting my own well-being, leaving dinner to the last minute, and neglecting the parts of my life that truly matter to me. Time blocking instead of scheduling has helped me find the balance of freedom and structure that I need in order to thrive, be a good wife, work in a healthy way, and achieve my athletic goals. I can’t speak highly enough here. If you have children, you know your schedule has shifted for fall anyway, and many of us as students may already have built in structure. But don’t forget to be intentional with all of your day and plan your priorities into it.
Organize Your Calendar
Plan all of your vacations, trips, and holidays now (we do this in a shared spouse calendar)
Schedule in your weekly date night, self-care time, and events into a calendar. Plan for the activities you would like to do.
Create a morning and evening routine for yourself to follow daily as a guideline.
Schedule in your workouts.
Schedule space for spiritual connection and practice.
Budget
I’ll keep this one simple because it is not an area of expertise in my life. I’m not the best at finances, but I am trying to get better and I know the value of being a good steward of money. Each season, we try to do a quarterly finance review as a couple, and I try to use it as an opportunity to re-center on our financial goals. This is a great time to do a big overview, reset your monthly or weekly budget, budget and start saving for christmas, etc.
That’s it. I know that’s a lot. But I really do encourage you to take some time to follow this checklist and get yourself reset this fall. It’s easy to push this work aside because we may not feel like it moves the needle on making money or serving other people. But this work is what sets the foundation for everything else in our life and is more important than scrambling to keep up with the day to day.
