WHY SEPTEMBER IS THE BEST TIME FOR FRESH STARTS

September not only brings with it the close of a season but the chance to start afresh with new goals and to finally get working on those dreams you've been storing in your head until now. Why? Because September is synonymous with new starts - a unwritten notebook in school, new uniform which is yet to be torn or muddied, a new "year" ahead of you to finally get the motivation to start living the life you've only been dreaming about before now.

When you set goals on the 1st of January, most people fall at the first hurdle, never mind making it to the end of the month. It's too cold in January to start a running regime, you're constantly surrounded by diet advice so you feel immense guilt when you tuck into those left over Christmas choccies and you're too poor from Christmas spending to be able to put some money into making said dream a reality. Which makes September the perfect time to start afresh. 

After a summer of travels, working and decorating, I decided to spend last weekend giving my flat an autumn clean to rid of all the unnecessary stuff I was hoarding. Nine bags later (half for the charity shop and half to the bin men) it felt like I'd been given a new set of keys to my house. It was like I'd cleared out the crap from my life and could make room for the new start. If you haven't given your home an autumn clean then I'd definitely recommend doing so because trust me, it's brutal when you start, deciding what to be ruthless with and throw away, but once you're finished it's like you've had therapy, no joke. 

September also brings with it renewed motivation, like when you've returned from holiday and you feel ready and raring to go again. If you've got a goal to work towards - losing weight, writing your first e-book, saving for a mortgage - make September the month that you'll make a plan of how you're going to achieve this. Here are a few of my goals I want to make a start on this month.

Buying a House

OK, so I'm not actually buying a house this month, but I do want to make a solid financial plan of how I can get the deposit together and in what timescale I'm looking at. I've already worked on lowering my monthly bills, which I have a post coming up soon on, and I've started to generate other avenues of  income, again which I'll talk about some time, but for now it's less about the spending and more about property hunting and mortgage rates. The life of a grown up huh. 

Boot Camp

I'll also be using September to kick-start my non-existing fitness regime and on Monday I officially start a 6 week intensive boot camp. For the next month and a bit I'm booked in to do 30 mins hardcore training 6 x week at 6.15am. Yes that's 6.15 in the AM. But I knew this was going to be the only way I'd finally give my arse the kick it so needs, and having put "be happy with my body" on my vision board and then suddenly getting a Facebook message about a discounted rate at this boot camp, I'm starting to believe the universe might have sent it my way.

Vlogging my Trip to New York

Finally, September will be the month I finally work on one of my mini goals, designed to help me achieve a milestone goal in the future (the milestone goal being running my own Apartment Number 4 empire). And that mini goal is vlogging. The big V. The reason I haven't vlogged until now is because I have zero skills in editing, my Leeds accent is super strong on camera and I've been unclear about the direction I want to head in with video content. I don't have an exciting enough life to be able to vlog weekly. And I don't really buy enough to do hauls. But there are so few interior design vloggers out there that I think there's a niche for it right now. Trouble is there are so many amazing vloggers out there who create, what are basically, mini films, and I'm here like, "hey this is Vickie, in my bedroom, with a camera balancing on a pile of magazines." But seen as I'm heading to New York on the 25th of this month I decided to give it a go and vlog this trip away. Plus, I even bought myself the Olympus Pen EPL7, which is amazing quality to vlog so there really is no excuse right? Wish me luck.

So those are my September goals. Are you using the month ahead as a fresh start for anything in particular? Do you have new goals you want to achieve? Obviously I'll keep you updated with boot camp and vlogging attempts - I'm sure I'll be tweeting about it at some point. Anyway, here's to an inspiring September.