The October Reset

Preparing Your Home, Heart, and Mind for the Cooler Months

There are 73 days left in 2025. Yes—seventy-three. Social media might tell you that time is running out, serving a steady stream of book launches, luxury travel, unboxings, magazine features, and every accolade imaginable. As my mum always says, “Not everything that glistens is gold.” Which is why we choose the quiet work of home, heart and mind over the noisy rush for more. Don’t get me wrong, we love social media. It has become a creative outlet for me (Mon), and we cherish this little corner of the internet we’ve built.

It matters, though, to remember what it doesn’t always show. It rarely shows the in-between days. The indecisions. The slow mornings laced with anxiety and lukewarm coffee. The weekends with no fancy invitations. The spats disguised as memes flying across your phone so fast you have to duck not to be hit by one. The evenings when the house is so quiet, you finally hear your own thoughts, and you want to run so far from yourself, only to realise it’s impossible. That is where life truly happens. We live inside the everydayness. The moments to notice, to savour, to be excited about — what Alain de Botton might call the quiet poetry of domestic life. Years ago I heard him speak about this, and it has stayed with me since.

Our first fire of the season 🥰

This isn’t a virtue sprint. We’re not trying to become perfect people, just kinder ones, a few minutes at a time. So, rather than chasing more, here’s how I’m spending the next 73 days. Gently, on purpose, with purpose.

I’m reminded to return to self, and I’m inviting you to do the same, one small choice at a time. Make the bed. Open the windows. Light a candle. Take a long shower. Play a song that helps you breathe differently. Tidy the spaces you’ve been neglecting, including the space in your mind crowded by other people’s issues. Take your mind for a gentle walk! Yes, the walk you’ve been meaning to go on for the last three months. (It’s fine. It’s been on the calendar since June.) Challenge yourself not to sprint towards an invisible finish line in a race that isn’t yours. Let the next 73 days be an invitation to steady, sustainable care, with small actions that make your mind, body, and home feel more spacious.

A brief self-disclosure

Those of you who have supported us for a while will know that I (Mon) have been on a wellness journey since around 2021. I got serious in 2022, and truly found consistency in 2025. I have often wondered when it will end. When will I arrive at “ultimate wellness”? I used to imagine it would be when I reached my ideal weight, became a senior executive in a global organisation, or became a marathon runner. If I achieved those things, I could display my physique, title and medals. Heck, I was adamant I needed all three to truly declare my wellness journey a success. It took me a while, but I realised two things. First, every one of those markers sat outside the self. Second, the list would keep expanding, moving the goalposts from one accolade to the next. Thinner, higher salary, more titles, more medals. I’d be fixated on the scales, measuring myself against others who weren’t even aware they were in a race with me, and collecting medals to prove how amazing I am. The result was a restless hunger for proof: never quite content, always performing achievement for an imagined audience that was always just out of reach.

That realisation was a wake-up call. In clinical language, I had confused external validation with internal regulation. In everyday language, I was chasing applause instead of attunement. Applause is lovely; attunement helps you sleep. Wellness, I am learning, is not a finish line or a reveal. It is a practice of returning: to breath, to body, to values, to boundaries, to restraint and control. The peaceful discipline of care, repeated until it becomes character.

My 73-day commitment

For the remainder of the year, I am choosing consistency over spectacle and grace over all-or-nothing thinking:

• Movement: daily movement that celebrates function. At a minimum, 30 mindful minutes of exercise.

• Hydration: at least two litres of water each day, starting with a glass on waking.

• Upskilling: one focused learning block on my current skill pathway, five days a week.

• Play: one fun, creative act—bringing an idea to life through writing or content creation.

A kind of maintenance of the self with small, actions that keep me resourced, teachable and well. If I arrive anywhere, let it be here. Present, hydrated and moving. Consider it a gold medal in showing up. Full disclosure: one day last week I ate dinner at 10pm and the bed was absolutely not made but I am still here, still resetting.

The October reset

If the mind is where the reset begins, the home is where it takes root. After all, it’s hard to ask your nervous system to soften when every surface shouts for your attention. Over the years, I’ve learnt that care lands best when my environment agrees with it. This may not be true for you, and that's OK. Personally, I thrive best when my surroundings are clean, calm, and clutter free.

Soft light. Clear surfaces. A scent that signals, “You can exhale now.”

Small, repeatable gestures turn a space into support. One ritual steadies everything: making the bed each morning. It’s a two-minute vote for order and a simple signal to your brain that the day has begun on purpose, with purpose. Olympic sport, but the podium is your pillow.

So, as I commit to 73 days of steady, sustainable care, I’m extending that same gentleness to the rooms we live in. Not a grand before-and-after makeover.

A simple reset: less clutter, warmer textures, cosy corners, and rituals that make daily life feel calmer and more deliberate. Not so much a makeover show; more like witness protection for visual noise 😉.

Here’s how I’m resetting our home this October

• Clear all surfaces, keeping only what we use or love.

• Choose a scent for the season. Ours are Clementine & Juniper, Spa Restore, and Lime & Bay to anchor a calmer, more intentional atmosphere.

• Refresh the fabrics we touch often—bedding, pillows, sofa throws.

• Two-basket sweep: one for things to put away and one for donating. (Put away, donate, or mysteriously vanish into the hallway cupboard 😉)

• October Reset playlist with our favourite tunes—save it and play it on loop.

• Step outside for at least ten minutes and name one sign of the season out loud. “That is a crunchy leaf.” Absolutely counts.

Room-by-room mini reset map! (screenshot or save)

Living room (evening wind-down)

• One-minute tidy sweep

• Throw over the arm of the sofa to signal off-duty

• Candle on a tray for an intentional scent moment

  • Suggested scent: Seychelles – perfect for evening wind-down and slow-weekend company

Kitchen (morning reset)

• Clear the sink and one counter only

• Coffee in hand before phone in hand

• Suggested scent: Clementine & Juniper to cue a fresh start

Bedroom (sleep cue)

• Make the bed

• Low, warm light; textured throw at the foot

• A glass of water and a real book on the bedside

• Suggested scent: Spa Restore, about thirty minutes before lights out

When the plan falls apart

Pick the easiest win: make the bed or open a window or fill a glass of water. One counts. “Reset tomorrow” is still a reset.

So Join the 73-day October Reset

Pick one action each day from Home, Heart, and Mind. Keep it simple and repeatable:

Home — make the bed; open the windows; light your signature scent; two-basket sweep; clear one surface

Heart — message someone you appreciate; practise one boundary; write one line of gratitude; share a screen-free meal

Mind — ten minutes of movement; one litre of water across the day; one focused learning block; five minutes of quiet breathing

A promise for the next 73 days

I will measure progress by presence. I will honour ordinary days. I will make room for rest. I will celebrate small wins and let them be enough.

Evidence corner

Think of these as friendly receipts from science, not homework.

• Ten minutes of movement = calmer brain fog.

• One tree + two deep breaths = lower shoulders.

• One song you love = steadier heart rate.

• One clear counter = less mental clutter.

  
  

This is gentle wellbeing support, not a substitute for clinical care. If you’re struggling, your GP or NHS 111 can help.

My invitation to you

If this landed, join me for the October Reset series across the home, heart and mind. We’ll keep it simple, sensory and sustainable. One small act, repeated often. As the days shorten and the air cools, our homes become our haven again—swapping evenings in the garden for evenings lounging inside. Returning to warmth, to stillness, to the quiet rituals that hold us together when the world feels noisy. I am officially declaring that the October Reset is our annual reminder to slow down, refresh our surroundings, and nurture calm through scent, texture and sound.

Your home can heal you, if you let it, so light the candle. Open the window. Play the song and come home to yourself.

With love always,

Mon xxx