Rug Cleaning

I love watching yard-cleaning videos, where someone with power tools tackles an overgrown yard. I don’t enjoy rug cleaning videos as much, but they calm and ground the mind too. These are like training wheels for a mindfulness practice—help to both focus and unclench.

Restoration-of-order or “satisfying task” videos are super popular—maybe you watch them too? More on the phenomenon in the article  “Sometimes you just need to watch a guy unclog a drain” on NPR’s Pop culture happy hour (2/4/25), which shared this 6-hour (!) rug cleaning video.

Besides being soothing and centering, the article’s author, Linda Holmes, suggests they also model how we can work to good ends in hard circumstances. Like always, and now: 

“It takes work, it takes an enormous amount of patience, it takes knowledge, and it takes some willingness to look at something that looks like it's wrecked and say, 

‘Well, I'm going to try, anyway.’”

———

 

PS. I see that Robert Reich has expanded his original list of 10 Things You Can Do "in light of TrumpII's first 18 days of mayhem". There are now 16 things you can do:

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/more-on-what-you-can-do

Watching rug/yard–cleaning videos comes under Reich's no. 15:

Take care of yourself and your loved ones.
Please do not become so obsessed by what Trump and Musk are doing that you neglect your own well-being.

We will get through this, and we will prevail. But it will require confidence, courage, and tenacity.
We need to stay healthy for this fight.
We need to be fortified by those we care about.
And we need to be there for those we love.