10 Tips for a Mindful Home

Karen Maezen Miller offers 10 simple tips for a mindful home.

Karen Maezen Miller7 September 2021
Photo by Pau Casals.

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.

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

Karen Maezen Miller

Karen Maezen Miller

Karen Maezen Miller is a priest in the Soto Zen lineage of Taizan Maezumi Roshi and a student of Nyogen Yeo Roshi. In daily life, as mother to daughter Georgia and as a writer, she aims to resolve the enigmatic truth of Maezumi’s teaching, “Your life is your practice.” Miller is the author of Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood, and most recently, Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons from a Zen Garden.