If you have children, I suspect you'll understand what I mean when I say September feels much more like New Year than January ever does.
January comes with good intentions.
September comes with a calendar full of things that actually have to happen.
The bank holiday weekend is here, the last few days of August are disappearing, and I can feel the change already - nights' fair drawin' in as we Scots Say!
The schools in some parts of the UK are already back at school, and here in England we've got another few days before the school bags come out - having a flash back to the time I found a six week old banana - the uniforms are found and everyone starts remembering what day of the week it is again.
There's a few other signs that summer is coming to an end.
The last of the sand needs to be emptied out of the bottom of the laundry basket and the stuff that's lived in the garden all summer needs to go back into the garage until next year.
And somewhere in the house there is almost certainly a swimming costume that nobody has seen for three weeks but hasn't yet officially been declared missing.
That's when you know September is coming.
Summer has its own rhythm
I love the summer holidays for exactly the reason that they can be slightly chaotic.
Bedtimes move. Days blur into each other. Nobody is entirely sure what day it is and, for a few weeks, that doesn't really matter.
Then September arrives and suddenly everyone needs to be somewhere at a particular time. I used to measure it by the Edinburgh Festival coming to an end ... great memories.
Now it's all about the school starts. Clubs start. Activities start again. Timetables change. Emails arrive. Forms need filling in. Payments need setting up. Appointments need remembering.
Things that seemed a very long way away in July suddenly become next Tuesday.
And somehow, it all happens at once.
That's why September feels like a reset.
Not a perfect, fresh-start, new-diary kind of reset.
A real-life reset.
The sort where you find yourself standing in the kitchen wondering where the summer went and whether anyone actually knows what they're supposed to be doing next week.
Maybe we don't need to get more organised
Every September, there seems to be a renewed determination to "get organised".
Buy the diary.
Sort the paperwork.
Clear out the kitchen drawer.
Get everyone's schedules onto the calendar on the fridge...
But, I'm not sure being more organised is actually the problem.
Most of us know how to organise things.
The difficult bit is keeping track of everything once normal life starts moving again.
There are more emails, more documents, more appointments, more dates and more little things that need remembering than any one person can reasonably keep in their head.
And that's where a system becomes useful.
Not one that expects you to become a different, more organised version of yourself.
One that works with the way you actually live.
That's one of the reasons I built Doqit.
The aim isn't to help people organise their lives perfectly.
It's to give them somewhere they can keep hold of the important information that life keeps throwing at them, so they know where to find it when they need it.
Because September has a funny habit of reminding us just how much there is to remember.
So here we go again
I'm not going to spend the last few days of August trying to get everything sorted.
I am going to put away the things that belong to summer, find the things that belong to September and accept that the first couple of weeks will probably be a bit chaotic.
That's family life.
And actually, I quite like that.
The trick isn't to make life perfectly organised.
It's to make sure the important things don't get lost in the chaos.
Buckle up - Autumn is round the corner!
Doqit. Nothing missed. Nothing lost.
About Doqit
Doqit is the system households rely on to make sure nothing gets missed.
Founded by Catherine Ann Reid and built from lived experience, Doqit was created to take the weight of life admin off people's shoulders; not by helping them "get organised", but by giving them a system that works with the reality of modern life.
It connects documents, information and deadlines in one place, so everything is easy to find, simple to manage, and there when it's needed most.
From insurance policies and passports to school records and medical information, Doqit keeps track of the details that matter, helping people stay on top of the things that are easy to forget but difficult to live without.
Doqit. Nothing missed. Nothing lost.
Published: 29th August 2026