10 Tips for a Mindful Home

by Karen Maezen Miller| September 7, 2021

Karen Maezen Miller offers 10 simple tips for keeping a mindful home. How simple? Well, as Karen says, “If you can do the first one, the next nine take care of themselves.”

1. Wake with the sun

There is no purer light than what we see when we open our eyes first thing in the morning.

2. Sit

Mindfulness without meditation is just a word.

3. Make your bed

The state of your bed is the state of your head. Enfold your day in dignity.

4. Empty the hampers

Do the laundry without resentment or commentary and have an intimate encounter with the very fabric of life.

5. Wash your bowl

Rinse away self-importance and clean up your own mess. If you leave it undone, it will get sticky.

6. Set a timer

If you’re distracted by the weight of what’s undone, set a kitchen timer and, like a monk in a monastery, devote yourself wholeheartedly to the task at hand before the bell rings.

7. Rake the leaves

Rake, weed, or sweep. You’ll never finish for good, but you’ll learn the point of pointlessness.

8. Eat when hungry

Align your inexhaustible desires with the one true appetite.

9. Let the darkness come

Set a curfew on the internet and TV and discover the natural balance between daylight and darkness, work and rest.

10. Sleep when tired

Nothing more to it.

Print this image to hang on your fridge:

This list also appears on Karen Maezen Miller’s blog, Cheerio Road.