Clean Like a Monk:

Daily Mindfulness Starts with Cleaning Your Floor

Last summer my aunt sent me a little book that I came to love and I learned a lot about loving my home and how cleaning your home can be a meditation and mindfulness practice. The book is called “A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind.” by Shoukei Matsumoto.

I found the teachings in this book to be so gentle, so kind. Through this book we can all learn that caring for our home is also caring for ourselves and others. It is a practice of joy, a practice of love. This is what I love about this book and what I learned from it. Recently, I decided to pick up the book again as it was calling to me (just this morning in fact.)

After reading the book last year, for quite some time I started a daily ritual of waking up early, sweeping our main floor and then mopping the floor by hand with a cloth. I did this in the beautiful silence of the early morning. I didn’t listen to a podcast of music, I just focused on the rhythm of the cleaning. I heart the birds outside, I observed my thoughts and let them go. I wiped away the dirt of the floor and the dirt of any negative thinking that I had lingering in my mind. I loved the feeling of seeing a shining, clean floor each morning to start the day with. I was sweeping away any bad energy and starting each day fresh. This process took only 30 minutes each morning and I found…