A Slower Life, Right in the Middle of a Full One

There is a particular version of slow living that is very easy to imagine at this time of year.

The mornings are misty. There is bread baking in the kitchen and a pot of something bubbling gently on the stove. Candles are lit by four in the afternoon. Nobody appears to be looking for a missing school jumper, answering an email while unloading the dishwasher or wondering how on earth it can already be Thursday.

It is beautiful, and I like looking at it too.

But it isn’t really my life.

My autumn mornings are much more likely to involve an alarm going off while it is still dark, teenagers getting ready for school, animals needing to be fed, somebody looking for something they definitely left right there, washing waiting to be moved, dinner needing to be thought about and me mentally rearranging the day before I’ve finished my first cup of tea.

And yet, strangely enough, I think of autumn as one of the seasons when I live most slowly.

Not because there is less going on, but because I’m learning that slow living and having a slow life are not quite the same thing.

What does slow living actually mean?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

I write about slow living, seasonal living and intentional living here all the time. They’re phrases I’ve used for years, and increasingly I’ve found myself wondering what I actually mean by them.

Because I don’t particularly want a life in which nothing happens.

I like projects and plans. I like getting things done. I like family life and Sunday dinners and going places and having things to look forward to. I like busy days when I’ve used my energy well and go to bed tired because the day was full.

I’m also not naturally very good at doing absolutely nothing. Give me a free afternoon and there is a reasonably good chance that within half an hour I’ll have invented a small project for myself.

So perhaps my version of slow living was never going to be about making my life as empty as possible.

Increasingly, I think it’s about being present enough to notice the life that is already full.

And autumn seems to remind me of that every year.

Autumn isn’t actually a slow season

We talk about autumn as though everything suddenly becomes quiet. Nature slows. The evenings draw in. We come home.

Except, of course, real life doesn’t always cooperate.

September and October can be enormously busy months. Schools restart. Activities return. Work settles back into its usual rhythm. Calendars fill. There are appointments and lifts and deadlines and forms and dinners and laundry and all the other invisible machinery that keeps family life moving.

Then Halloween begins appearing on the horizon and, whether we’re ready to admit it or not, Christmas isn’t very far behind it.

Autumn can be full.

Mine certainly is.

And maybe that’s why the smaller things begin to matter more: the first morning when I need a jumper to go outside, the sound of leaves under my feet on a walk, putting a lamp on earlier in the evening, apples gathered from the garden, making soup again after months of salads and easy summer dinners, coming through the door when it’s cold outside and feeling the warmth of the house.

None of those things slows the clock down.

But somehow they slow me down.

For a moment, at least.

The difference between the aesthetic and the practice

There is a beautiful aesthetic around slow living, and I don’t have any great objection to it. I love a candle. I love a cosy blanket. Give me a ridiculous autumn mug and a rainy afternoon and I’m perfectly happy.

But none of those things is slow living.

They’re lovely things. That’s different.

You can buy the mug and light the candle and still rush through your entire life. And equally, you can practise slow living while standing beside a football pitch, sitting in traffic, making packed lunches or putting a load of washing on at ten o’clock at night.

Perhaps the real practice is much less photogenic.

It’s deciding that you don’t have to fill every empty space.

It’s eating dinner together when you can.

It’s putting your phone down when somebody starts telling you something.

It’s taking the walk even though there are jobs waiting at home.

It’s noticing that everyone is tired and changing the plan.

It’s recognising when something is enough.

It’s letting an ordinary day be an ordinary day without constantly asking how you could make it more productive.

That last one is something I am still very much learning.

An ordinary Sunday

This weekend gave me a rather good example.

We woke on Sunday morning to torrential rain. The house was unusually dark, there was a weather warning in place and most of the plans we might have made for the morning disappeared fairly quickly. So we stayed home.

Everyone slept later than usual. We stayed in our pyjamas. I put coffee and pecan pastries in the oven and made coffee, and we spent the morning with books, music and the radio playing in the background. Nothing remarkable happened, and it was lovely.

Later, I started making our Sunday dinner — roast beef, vegetables, herbs and a good glug of red wine, everything slowly cooking away in an old casserole dish in the oven.

When it came close to dinner, I looked at the table and very nearly didn’t bother setting it.

We could eat at the island. Nobody would mind. It would certainly be easier.

But then I thought about the dinner I’d spent the afternoon making and decided that actually, I wanted to set the table.

So I did.

I brought out the candles, added a few autumn decorations and made an ordinary Sunday dinner feel just a little more like an occasion.

From the outside, perhaps that looks like the slow-living part: the candles, the autumn table, the roast in the oven.

But I don’t think it was.

I think the slow-living part happened much earlier, when the day we’d imagined changed and we didn’t immediately try to replace it with another plan. It was accepting the rainy morning. Allowing everybody to be tired. Enjoying the pastries and coffee rather than thinking we should be somewhere else.

And later, it was deciding that an ordinary Sunday dinner was worth making something of simply because we were all there to enjoy it.

The table was just the visible part.

I don’t want to perform the seasons

This is probably why seasonal living has become so important to me too.

I don’t want to perform the seasons.

I don’t have an autumn checklist that must be completed before November arrives. There will be autumns when we take long walks and gather apples and bake constantly, and others when life is busy and half the things I imagined doing never happen.

There will probably be years when the pumpkins make it out of the box and years when they don’t.

None of it matters very much.

What I do like is allowing the seasons to influence the rhythm of our home.

Summer loosens things. Days stretch out, routines soften and we spend more time outside.

Autumn draws us back towards home and familiar rhythms.

Winter asks for warmth and rest.

And spring, eventually, nudges us towards the door again.

There is something comforting about knowing that the year has its own rhythm whether or not I am particularly organised about following it. The seasons aren’t another project to complete. They’re simply there, changing around us, inviting us to notice.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve become so fond of these weeks.

Autumn doesn’t require me to reinvent anything.

It simply reminds me to notice the shift.

Slow doesn’t mean small

I also think I once confused a slower life with a smaller one.

I’m not sure I believe that anymore.

A slow life can be ambitious. It can contain work that matters to you. It can contain teenagers and travel and deadlines and projects and people and noise. It can contain days when you accomplish an enormous amount and days when you accomplish very little.

There are times when life needs us to move quickly. There are seasons when people need more from us. There are deadlines that really do matter and days when the sensible thing is simply to put your head down and get on with it.

I don’t think living intentionally means resisting any of that.

Perhaps it means being a little more conscious of whether all that fullness is simply happening to us, or whether we’re making some choices about what deserves our time and attention.

That’s something I’m thinking about increasingly as I get older.

Not How can I fit more into my days?

But What do I actually want my days to contain?

Those are very different questions.

Because there will always be more things I could do. Another job. Another plan. Another place to go. Another thing to improve.

The list is endless.

My time isn’t.

And intentional living, for me, is becoming less about creating the perfect routine and more about remembering that distinction.

A slower life in the middle of a full one

I don’t think I’m ever going to become somebody who floats serenely through her days. There will probably always be a part of me thinking, While I’m here, I might as well just…

Sometimes that part of me is extremely useful.

Sometimes she needs to be told to sit down and drink her tea.

Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to slow living in the first place. Not because slowness comes naturally to me, but because it doesn’t.

I need the reminder.

And autumn gives me one.

The changing light. The cooler mornings. The leaves gathering underfoot. The return of familiar routines. The first evenings when we close the curtains earlier and settle in. They remind me that life is moving whether I rush through it or not.

There will be busy weeks this autumn. There will be plans that change and things I don’t get around to. There will be evenings when dinner is something quick and nobody is lighting a candle. There will undoubtedly be days when I spend far too much time looking at a screen and days when the house feels anything but calm.

That doesn’t mean I’ve somehow failed at living slowly.

Because perhaps a slower life isn’t really about the speed of life at all.

Perhaps it’s about our relationship with it: knowing when to hurry and when not to, knowing what deserves our attention, allowing an ordinary Sunday to be enough.

And noticing, every now and then, that the life we’re so busy trying to organise and improve and make the most of is already happening.

Right here.

Right in the middle of the full one.

Chat soon,

Ciara x

More from Our Little House in the Country

🍂 Continue Exploring Autumn

Autumn is a season of slowing down, finding comfort in everyday moments, and creating simple rhythms that help us feel grounded. If you’re looking for more gentle inspiration, you’ll find plenty of seasonal ideas, free printables and cosy reads waiting for you below.

• What Are You Filling Your Life With?
  What are we filling our lives with? A reflection on attention, ordinary goodness and learning to notice what deserves more room in the lives we’re already living.
• A Slower Life, Right in the Middle of a Full One
  Slow living doesn’t necessarily mean having a slow life. An autumn reflection on intentional living, seasonal rhythms, full family days and learning to notice the life that’s already happening around us.
• Slow October: 31 Simple Ways to Cosy Up Your Days This October
  Welcome to Slow October — 31 gentle invitations to notice the season, find little moments of comfort and connection, and enjoy the heart of autumn. Download the free illustrated and large-text October calendars plus the October Journaling Reflections page.
• When the Days Feel Like Themselves Again
  There’s something lovely about summer days losing their edges. But as autumn returns, I’m rediscovering the quiet comfort of the week finding its shape again — Friday feeling like Friday, Sunday feeling like Sunday, and ordinary life settling back into its familiar rhythm.
• Not Everything Ripens at the Same Time
  On a soft, drizzly September morning, the apples, pears and blackberries offered a quiet reminder: not everything ripens at the same time. A seasonal reflection on change, readiness and learning to let life unfold in its own time.