Living Seasonally

Living seasonally.  It's something I've been thinking about more over the last few years.  I don't even fully know what I mean by that but here I am writing a whole blog post about it anyways!  

I wrote a post, still one of my favorites that I've written, about Appreciating all the Seasons.  In that case, literally the four seasons, that are pretty distinctly different here in Indiana (the subtitle to that post should have been: stop complaining about snow in early March in Northern Indiana, everyone.  It's what it does here occasionally that time of year.  We even had a decent snow fall in mid-April this year that was then melted within 24 hours).  I don't like being cold but I really do appreciate living somewhere with 4 distinct weather seasons.  Even though the margins on all of them get blurred - why we had a 44° day earlier this week and then a 75° day later this week.  Why the heat and AC might possibly be on within the same 7 days.  (We didn't hit that this fall but we were VERY close.)

 

This is something I have been thinking of, really in the past 3 years, and then I listened to a lot of podcast episodes with this author when her latest book came out (which my library finally just got and I will be starting soon) and realized that a large part of what I've been doing is focusing the feeling of the seasons.  I do some seasonal decorating but that's just a small part of all the way I recognize the change of seasons.

Some of this is necessary - this is about the time of year I switch over my closets/dresser/cabinet clothes to have my sweaters and long sleeved tees out and pack my tank tops and short sleeved tees back in the closet where they are easily accessible for those random 75° days but not front and center for the majority that are closer to 55°.  I rotate out my closet twice a year because I value not freezing in the winter (as much as reasonably possible) and not burning up in the summer (as much as reasonably possible and besides running).  I find this switch out of clothes to be rather exciting - I always like pulling out my boots and sweaters again in the fall and my t-shirts in the spring.  It's like having a new wardrobe without the expense and work of shopping!  I definitely see that as a benefit to living somewhere with distinguishable season. 

There are the obvious changes in the year like the school calendar, even that's a relatively new addition to our lives.  There is nothing quite like the start of school to signal that summer is coming to an end (even if that's not when we consider our summer over, sorry, Luke.  I guess you go to school over the summer), Christmas break to kick off the celebrating, and the end of school in May/June to really start summer (besides, you know, this past spring when that's not quite how it all worked out).  

 

The other thing that dictates our schedule and the feeling of our home a lot is lake season (almost all of that post stands true 3 years later except that we do use the shower we had just gotten when I wrote that, a lot more than I expected.  Partially because I run nearly every time we're there.)   Other than opening and closing, we only go to the lake in the "summer" (warm weather), and not nearly every weekend at that.  But lake season has a whole different feel to it, as I am always working our menu plans, dishwasher running, diaper washing (when we're in that season), and trash taking out around our next lake trip as well as the lake just having a very summer feeling.  There are a lot of things we only do at the lake in the summer.  Riding the jet ski and the pontoon being the major ones but a lot of other things like poppers and keeping the boys up until 10pm for a sunset cruise.  Hah.  Summer starts when we go to the lake and ends when the jet ski comes home.  The lake is a huge part of the feeling of summer.

But there are a lot of other things I do seasonally that I've been doing for a few years now and that just feels long enough to start to be able to count on these seasonal shifts.  Tomorrow I am going to talk about the many different seasonal changes that I have incorporated into my life.  Some are more obvious like scents, others are my movie watching schedule that I've been following for awhile.  If I can find a way to organize something, I'm probably going to do that.  

Giving a name to this, even if it's just in my head (and now on the blog), makes me feel like it's more legit.  It's probably not even all I think that it is.  But it is my own way of honoring the changing seasons and building some reliable habits into my life.  I know it's fall because I look out my window and see brilliant color, it's getting colder and we need the heat on, AND I'm watching the same movie I watch every October.  Making things special by only doing them in certain months, at certain times of the year.  A lot of life is out of my control (obligatory nod to especially this year) but at least I can count on these little changes in my own life.