want to say something so embarrassing about September that even the leaves start blushing Red.
Jarrod Kintz
The blush of September usually makes me start thinking of organizing and getting things in order. Fall cleaning and changing out summer clothes for fall and winter ones. Notebooks, books, and new projects.
Or at least that’s the way it used to be. Now I live in Florida. There is no first blush of September…or October…or even November. The clothes I wear for 11 months of the year in Florida are the same. (There is usually that one month that gets a little chilly, you know the 50s.) And the leaves on the Palm trees outside my door don’t change colors except for green to brown when they are getting ready to fall off, but all of them don’t fall off at the same time.
Today is also Labor Day. When I was growing up, it was the unofficial last day of summer because on Tuesday we went back to school. These days kids start school in August. When I was taking my son to school in the 1990s that’s when school started – the week before Labor Day. Guess who usually missed the first three days of school because we were on vacation? My son.
I was lamenting the start of school coming before Labor Day in my 2016 post of the same name. But I also included a link to a page about the history of Labor Day. It includes videos, talks about the unsafe working conditions of the Industrial Revolution, and about child labor. It was amazing to learn that child labor didn’t really stop until the early 20th century and it was Labor Unions and the workers who brought attention to this horrible condition and pushed for laws to change it. (There had been laws created in the 1800s about child labor, but they were not being followed or enforced.)
Or you can check out this post which talks about how the Labor Day holiday started. It’s a celebration of the workers, not the labor unions. Why Do We Celebrate Labor Day?
But, because it’s Labor Day weekend and because September demands new projects and new starts, I’m trying it again. A Bullet Journal. I’ve just created my calendars for the last 4 months of the year. I like to create them upfront so I can see the months altogether in order to make planning easier. I hope it lasts…we’ll know in a week or two! As you may recall, that’s not always the case. Why I Don’t Like Bullet Journals.
When I was growing up, Labor Day also came with a reminder that we needed to follow one of my mother’s fashion rules. I share that and other funny fashion rules my mother made us follow in my Mommyism post, Don’t Wear White After Labor Day. I hope you get some laughs and maybe some memories from this one.

Happy Labor Day, Jennifer. Thanks for the info–and I remember your post from Labor Day 2016!
Happy Labor Day, Jen. I enjoyed your round up post.
Jennifer, So serendipitous… I started writing a post yesterday about Fall in Florida and how different it is versus all my previous experience will autumn. I’m working through what this seasonal change means to me now.
Look forward to reading it. My first fall here was last year and it was so odd for us. We didn’t even realize when it was Halloween because of the 80 degree Temps.
Welcome to my world. Living in Los Angeles, we wear the same clothes all year except for an occasional jacket and even rarely a heavy coat. But, it’s still nice.
Where did the white rule come from? I’ve heard it mentioned in lots of America tv shows and films. I love autumn or fall! Love the start of cosy knits the autumnal colours for clothes and the changing of the leaves.
This rule always caused me problems when I was growing up because I look good in white! But most of the research points to it being a snobbish bit of trickery between the old money and new money. They started making up rules that only they knew so they could tell the nouveau riche from old money. And somehow it stuck around for about 100 years.
Classist interesting! Old school mean girls!