A January Reset That’s Worth Keeping
My January reset has nothing to do with a gym membership or a clean-eating pledge I won’t want by February.
It’s smaller than that—quieter than that. Here in Florida, January is the month the air finally cools down. The rain backs off.
The solstice has passed, which means the days are stretching out again—almost imperceptibly—and the light shifts too. It’s warmer and softer. Like the sun is turning its face back toward you.
And after months of holidays and, honestly, months of there’s a hurricane coming, the house feels calm again.
No big plans.
No dinner menus to engineer for Thanksgiving or Christmas or Hanukkah. No mental math about who’s visiting, what they ate last time, what we need to make new—whether we have enough sheets, why we’re missing one pillowcase from the set that should be complete.
January is the month where the noise leaves.
That’s the reset.
Not changing who I am—just returning to myself.
If you’ve read my piece Christmas in Paris, you already know I have a soft spot for this kind of winter quiet—the kind that makes space for you to breathe again.
The Things That Don’t Change Are the Luxury
I think that’s what I’m really chasing this time of year.
Not novelty.
Not reinvention.
The luxury of things that stay the same. Because the truth is, the small things that never change are the ones that center me the fastest. They’re the easiest to come back to. They don’t require a performance.
They just work.
The Citrus That Brightens My Kitchen
Lemons are one of those things for me.
They’re there in the summer too, but in January they feel different. Maybe it’s because everything else has been loud for weeks—and lemon is simple and quiet.
A roasted chicken with a lemon tucked into the cavity. Not trendy. Not new. Just right for January.
Lemon zest over risotto right before it hits the table. A baby greens salad with a simple lemon vinaigrette. A squeeze of Meyer lemon in warm water with honey.
It’s the same job every time—freshen, lift, wake things up.
And the fact that it always does what it’s supposed to do—no drama—is its own kind of luxury.
Meyer lemon especially feels like that. Softer. More floral. Less bracingly sour. Almost perfumed.
Not all lemons speak the same language. If you want the nerdy breakdown, Bon Appétit has a great primer on Meyer lemon.
Borrowed Traditions for a January Reset
One cold December night in Atlanta, we sat outside with the chiminea going and cups of hot chocolate in our hands.
We were burning piñon wood, which smells like comfort—even if you’ve never smelled it before.
My soundtrack was playing, the one I always default to when I want life to feel a little more intentional—Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Diana Krall.
I was wearing my holy cashmere sweater, the one I’ve had for decades. It has little burn holes in it from other chiminea months at the farm—when a rogue spark would jump out and take a tiny bite.
A little hole saying hello—glad you’re here.
It’s not a sweater I get rid of. It’s part of the ritual. The sweater I wear when it’s really chilly and I want to stay outside anyway.
That night, I borrowed a tradition from a friend in Mexico who once showed me how she makes her hot chocolate.
I spiked mine with spiced rum and butterscotch schnapps, and we stayed out there longer than we meant to.
Some traditions don’t need to be inherited.
They just need to be repeated.
The Plates That Whisper “Take Me Home”
I’m a thrift store person. I like seeing what kitchen and entertaining treasures people let go of.
That’s how I’ve found the pieces I love—the ones you’ll never see lined up at Macy’s or Pottery Barn. My favorite is a faded Limoges plate I found in Indiana, buried in a pile, waiting for a new life.
It doesn’t just hold cookies. It holds crostini with prosciutto and brown butter. It holds huge meatballs in red sauce—sometimes in gravy.
In the summer it holds slices of beautiful salami and torn pieces of cheese.
Sometimes it’s thick slices of garden tomatoes—torn basil, mozzarella, and a little salt like it’s a sacred act.
That plate is not fancy because it cost money.
It’s fancy because it makes anything you put on it feel like you meant it.
The Ritual of a Slow Braise
In fall and winter, I love a slow braise.
Lamb shanks with orange peel and star anise. The smell alone makes the house feel warmer than the thermostat says it is.
Or a pot roast with carrot ribbons and canned potatoes.
Yes—canned potatoes. Don’t knock it until you try it. This is what I mean by reset. It’s not about doing something new.
It’s doing something that works—on purpose.
Small Luxuries, Big Comfort
In the evenings, I light Illume candles.
They’re a little higher in price, but the scents are beautiful and they last. They don’t smell inexpensive—they smell intentional.
In fall and winter it’s balsam and cedar, santal birch, firewood, winter white.
Then spring shows up and I shift into citrus crush.
Summer gets beach towel.
It’s a small thing, but it changes the whole feeling of the room.
That’s my January defiance—slowing down, adding style to stillness, letting small, steady luxuries be enough.
It’s the same spirit I wrote about in Small Acts of Resistance, Like Adding Salt—different ritual, same refusal to live bland.
January asks everyone to start over.
But I’m more interested in starting back.
Back to the small things that hold their shape—cool air in Florida, light that’s getting warmer again, a candle that makes the room feel intentional, lemon on my fingers because it fixes almost everything.
So maybe the question isn’t what I’m changing this year.
Maybe it’s what I’m keeping.
