Memories are made in the small moments
as much as the significant events.
Recently, on The Next Right thing podcast, Emily P Freeman began a journey with us of “discovering better decision-making habits by engaging our bodies, particularly our five senses.” As I’ve been resetting our home for the fall season, I have reflected on how our home inspires us with our senses, not just visually or practically.
Many of us fall into this habit of thinking that the best memories come from the vacations, the family outings, or the events we attend around certain seasons. We believe and plan in terms of the events and activities that fill up our calendars. Maybe we have fall traditions such as apple picking or visiting the pumpkin patch. Maybe there are certain activities we always make sure and schedule in around Halloween or Thanksgiving. What we “do” becomes the focus of our memory-making. In this Pandemic Life, we may find ourselves adjusting or changing our regular routines. But before we get too discouraged, let’s remember the million tiny ways that we are probably making seasonal memories and haven’t even realized. We create memories without thought or have never paid attention to our routine everyday lives.
This fall, I have decided to stop and take notes to pay attention to how we create memories with all of our senses. Who knows, maybe I will love it, and it will become a regular practice as seasons change.
Let’s start with scent. What smells do you associate with the fall season, and how do you incorporate those scents into your home? When I think of fall,l imagine pumpkin spice and apples. The smell of freshly baked apple pie or spiced apples cooking in the crockpot feels welcoming and inviting. I also love the smell of pumpkin spice and gravitate towards those candles at the store. So without realizing it, when September rolls around, I pick up candles that smell like pumpkin spice, and Mrs. Myers Apple Cider hand soap will appear on my kitchen counter. Another scent that comes to mind would be campfires and the smell of burning wood. Yet, I’m fine enjoying that outside, making time in our schedule for fires in the firepit as the evenings cool.
Cooking is fun for me most days, and I love to adjust our meals to fit the season. I’ve never really overthought about it; it’s just what I’ve done. Yet when I began to think about this season in terms of taste, I realized I had created rhymes around what flavors said fall. Cooking with seasonal ingredients helps simplify decisions about what to cook. As soon as the temperature cools, soups find a place on the menu. We enjoy all sorts of soups, but welcome fall is always our curried pumpkin soup. And because we don’t use all our canned pumpkin, pumpkin pancakes generally follow. And because apples are in season, we usually make a big pot of Spiced Apples. Spiced apples are perfect for adding to oatmeal for breakfast, throw a quick crumble on top and bake for an easy dessert or just eat them on their own. There are so many incredible flavors that come with the fall season. What flavors taste like fall to you?
When reflecting on the Sounds of fall, music was the first thing that came to mind. As soon as evening began to arrive earlier, jazz music started to play in our house. For whatever reason, when the cooler weather and shorter days come, I begin to find Diane Krall, Nora Jones, Bill Evans, and other jazzy musicians from our playlists. Then I began to think about different sounds associated with fall, like the wind blowing through the trees, the crinkle of dry leaves and crunch of acorns as you walk, or cicadas singing. Take a moment and ask yourself, what music or sounds of nature speak fall to your soul?
What do you see that reminds you of fall? Visually in fall, I’ve always just thought of color, orange pumpkins, and bare brown trees. Fall colors were all orange and brown. The vegetable garden is beginning to die out, and as the days shortened, everything just feels darker. That is until Myquillin Smith, aka @thenester, inspired me to shop my yard to bring fall visually into my home without having to shop. Suddenly, in my once assumed dying garden, I have found new colors, new life: so many purples and yellows, golden hues, and dusty pinks. When I expanded my vision and started looking, I found new things to inspire our home towards the fall season. Fall doesn’t have to be dark colors, but light and fresh colors blending beautifully with the season. There are natural colors of this season besides orange and brown; I’ve never paid attention to them before.
In the early weeks of preschool, one of the words I introduce is texture. I love teaching about texture to my preschool class. Getting us thinking about how different things feel. Soft, hard, smooth, bumpy, rough are all different textures. The texture of things isn’t just a word to explain how something feels, but it is also essential to setting the tone in our home. I gravitate towards lighter weight throws and things that feel smooth during the summer, yet I find myself drawn towards chunkier knits, brass, and darker wood tones as the temperatures drop. Realizing that texture changes the way space feels, I am looking for ways to add more texture into how I reset our home to feel like fall. What are the textures that you associate with fall? Have you ever thought about the role of texture in your home?
Stepping back and considering all of my senses has helped me recognize the many different ways we are already making memories. Without events or activities, memories are being created with the music we play, the food we make, and our home’s scents. Maybe pandemic life is an opportunity to focus less on the activities and more on the memories we make in our homes, using our five senses. Perhaps someday, when our children now grown, smell spiced apples cooking or hear jazz music playing, they will remember all that was Fall.
If you’re inspired check out Emily’s podcast, episode 142.
The Next Right Thing Podcast: Start with your Senses
https://emilypfreeman.com/podcast/the-next-right-thing/142/
