Week of Tips: Ground Yourself: Fall Cleaning

I usually set a tip for the week but in honor of fall, I am devoting a week of tips on how to ground ourselves.

Today marks the first truly chilly day in Boston.  Fall is definitely in the air.  Fall and spring are both transition seasons.  In between the extremes of the hot summer and frigid winter.  They are also the perfect times to revamp our diet and lifestyles.

If you remember from my post, Springtime = Time to Clean, spring is a great time to clean up ourselves, our homes and our diets from the winter to prepare for the hotter summer.  Like spring, fall is a perfect time to clean but the difference being for the winter. 

For me, the most significant "fall cleaning" is the chore of switching my wardrobe.  I write this post in the middle of many loads of laundry and an afternoon of sorting piles of shorts and sweaters into their storage bins and drawers respectively.  The act of clothes sorting is probably my least favorite to do.  I don't know how my mom does it year in and year out (or spring in and fall out :) but to me, it's arduous and time consuming.  However, this task is very important to me to prepare not only physically but also mentally for winter.

Spring cleaning is about opening the windows and letting fresh air in and cleaning up the heaviness that was winter.  Fall cleaning is about getting out of our heads. Summer allows us to stay out late and socialize and be outwardly focused.  Winter is about being more focused on our homes and families.  It's not a coincidence that Thanksgiving and Christmas are both in the winter time.  That being the case, fall cleaning includes making our homes comfy because we are going to be spending a lot of time there.

I am definitely going to focus more on decorating my sparsely decorated condo and ensuring it is going to allow for more activity at home.  A comfortable home environment can contribute so much to being happy when you are snowed in during those winter months.  Because there's two of us, it is also going to be important that we can do our respective activities without being in each other's way.  What are you going to do in your home to prepare for the fall?

Quote: The Four Seasons

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. 

~Stanley Horowitz

source

The northern and southern portions of the world have four seasons for countless reasons as does the area around the equator have many reasons to not have four seasons.  Growing up in the northeast, I have always loved the spring and fall but was not always fond of the winter and summer months. As I get older, I have learned to appreciate the beauty of each of the seasons - as if they were separate entities and not related to each other.  Kind of like how you should treat your children :)  Or how Stanley Horowitz describes them as creation of different methods of art.  As I have learned to love the abundance of new life in the spring, the freedom that summer represents, the beauty of the fall and the brisk winds of the winter (yes, I actually miss those winds!), I feel more connected with nature and the movements of the earth.  I'm always sad when season ends for another to begin but such is life.  It makes me appreciate what I've experienced in the past 3 months and anticipate my future.

How do you feel with the end of summer?

Autumn New Beginnings

I gotta admit, I was stuck in a rut in August. I felt like I was moving forwards in so many aspects of my life but being held back in so many others.  I'm definitely missing IIN and the amazing energy from the classes and the friends I've made.  My full time gig has been tough with a couple of less than mindful projects.  At the same time, I did receive my Reiki certification, bought a new car, and visited family!  Looking back on August, it was overall a good month and I post this in September because I'm heading towards the tail-end of my rut.  I'm ready to become a bigger (in some ways) and better me starting this month!
To me, September/autumn has always meant rebirth and a new start more so than January/the new year and April/spring.  I blame this entirely to the school system and the back-to-school sales at which I piled my shopping cart high with new Bic lead pencils (0.5mm, of course), Papermate pens, Trapper Keepers(!!), Five Star notebooks, plastic lunch boxes with cartoons on them, and new clothes.  The brand spanky new school supplies symbolized a much greater newness in my life that started every fall for 17 straight years.  Every year was a new year, an advancement from last and an opportunity to make new friends, learn more and shed a little bit of the old me behind.  This was especially true when I transitioned to a different school which happened in elementary, middle and high school and college. 
As I head into this fall, I look forward to embracing a sense of a new beginning and improving on who I was and who I've become in the past year.  Starting this fall, I plan to continue to develop my business with new programs (check out my latest here!), meditate more, practice my Reiki, sleep more, practice lots more yoga, embrace the season with leaf peeping trips and visits to a corn maze, apple orchard, and pumpkin patch, and be a better girlfriend, friend, sister, daughter, cousin, etc.  What are your thoughts of September?  Does this time of year conjure up the same feelings for you as it does for me?  What are your goals as we head into the season of leaves a-changing, pumpkin patches, corn mazes and trick o' treaters?