A Curiosity-Fuelled Summer Bucket List
Looking for an easier way to enjoy summer? This curiosity-fuelled bucket list offers 20 low-pressure, wellbeing-inspired ideas to help you slow down, reconnect, and find joy in the everyday.
You might love the idea of summer—the long days, the looser schedules, the promise of some sunnier days.
And yet, somewhere between school holidays, the laundry pile, and the pressure to “make the most of it,” it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind on even the fun stuff.
Enter the summer bucket list.
What starts with good intentions—picnics, beaches, fire pits—can quickly turn into another list of things you should be doing.
For years, I made summer lists like they were contracts with joy. But by the end of July, I’d be half-ticked-off and half worn-out.
Somewhere in the middle of trying to have a good time, I forgot to notice whether I actually was.
Here’s what changed everything:
I stopped treating summer like something I had to conquer… and started following my curiosity instead.
Curiosity doesn’t ask you to rush. It doesn’t compare. It doesn’t have a checklist or a destination.
It simply asks, what if I noticed this? or what happens if I try that?
And in doing so, it gently pulls us out of overwhelm and back into presence.
Because when you feel stretched thin, curiosity doesn’t demand energy—it offers it.
It’s the gentle restart your nervous system might need when you feel like you have to be and do all the things just because “it’s summer”..
Try not to see this as a list of goals. Rather reframe it as a list glimmers—small, no-pressure invitations to help you reconnect with yourself, your surroundings, and even your sense of play.
You don’t need to do them all. Or do them “right.”
Just follow your interest. Let yourself wonder again.
The Curiosity-Fuelled Summer Bucket List
Pick one today. Come back tomorrow—or don’t. This is yours to shape.
Walk a route you’ve never taken
Lie on the grass and look at the sky for 5 minutes
Text someone just to say you’re thinking of them
Buy yourself a magazine you used to love
Eat something slowly, outside if you can
Leave your phone behind for a short walk
Watch the sunset or sunrise, on purpose
Rearrange one corner of your home
Draw something badly (no erasing allowed)
Take a 5-minute ‘holiday’—window open, feet up
Write a one-line diary entry for 3 days in a row
Make a playlist that sounds like sunshine
Sit on your front step with a cold drink
Do something with your hands (paint, knead, cut, fold)
Say no to something that doesn’t feel like a yes
Visit a local place you’ve never set foot in
Gift something to someone for no reason
Stand still in nature and count 3 things you can hear
Wear your favourite clothes for no occasion at all
Try one thing from our Summer Scavenger Hunt
This is how summer gets to feel now:
A little less effort. A little more ease. A little more *you.
When we let curiosity lead, we find joy in unexpected places: on front steps, in ordinary walks, in the sound of birds.
We don't have to make it epic—we can find some joy in the smaller, more thrown together things.
If this list gave you ideas, here are 2 ways to follow the feeling:
1. Download our free Summer Scavenger Hunt – 28 curiosity-fuelled prompts to keep you exploring all that summer can be for you
2. Join the Summer Wellcation – A self-guided, 4-week invitation to feel better in the season you love
If you’re craving a slower, more intentional season, that’s exactly what Summer Wellcation is created for.
Collective Care // A Guide to Supporting Others While Supporting Ourselves
It’s with dual tensions in mind that we offer up our first shopping guide to supporting small during uncertain times.
We’re writing this — our first Shopping Small Guide — with competing interests. Like many of you now, we’re all too aware of what resources we have and how we can best use them. We’re hunkering down, saving where we can, managing our budgets in ways we might not have done previously. We’re acutely aware that many are struggling to pay rent, to cover food needs, and to sustain basic necessities, as they are being financially dragged under by this virus.
We also know that as we pull back and retreat, we’re creating more pain for independent businesses, creative spaces, and places in the world that rely on our support to make their own ends meet. We’re conscious of places closing now and shutting their doors, and though we are hopeful that they will reopen, we’re aware that they also might not be able to if they can’t sustain some aspect of their business during lockdown. And we’re worried that the vital businesses that made up our neighborhoods— that we might have overlooked as luxuries but which were sustaining the connections we all need in our lives unbeknownst to us — will disappear. That the texture and heart of human life, the places that baked the bread, pulled that shot of espresso and sold the books (insert your own list here), will cease to exist even if the conditions return to allow them to.
So it’s with those dual tensions in mind, that we offer up this guide. We’ve tried to identify products from places that we’ve supported and who we’d encourage you to continue to support if you can. Some offer self-care essentials, or new skills (clothes repairing). Some offer treats like really good coffee beans or magic (yes you don’t need unicorn horn polish, but does that idea make you smile?). Some offer support to get us through — conversation cards feel like a must now for those fading home relationships. Some just kindness like a simple thank you.
We hope that you can find something here that might help you and help others who created these as we negotiate these uncertain times in relation to one another. And as always let us know what we missed, what you love and what is bringing joy to you in who you support in your life right now.
Local Spotlight
If you live in the SF Bay Area, we hope you’ll join us in supporting these women-owned brands and businesses. Each of them has impacted us and helped to lift us up through this time, and we want to do the same for them.
