[As published in July/August 2026 BayBuzz magazine.]
Shines brighter than a Himalayan salt lamp, hums sweeter than a singing bowl, turns out my new vacuum is the best meditation mechanism my house has ever seen.
It’s a Duoflex HX1 Cat & Dog Grab-n-go Stick Vacuum in Obsidian Black with a HEPA filter…bagless, cordless with a powerful 25.2V DC digital efficiency motor that utilises vortex technology.
I’ve been bragging about it since I bought it. Then, my mate throws me a challenge to level up my vacuuming game by ‘Slow Vacuuming’.
I rush home to try it.
This social media trend has you vacuuming at 1 foot per second (that’s very slow), then showing off the resulting dust (50% of which is dead skin cells) on TikTok. It’s surprisingly effective. Not just at getting the grot out of the carpet but at chilling me out. It’s peaceful, covering a 2m x 3m rug in ten minutes. I reach a flow state with my deliberative domesticity. If I can apply that to everything, imagine how zen I’d become.
Italians call it dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. It means enjoying quiet moments, appreciating simple pleasures and doing one thing at a time without feeling bad about not multitasking.
Way back to the Romans, festina lente was employed, troops encouraged to “make haste slowly”, counselled to be patient in the acquisition of new skills and to focus on smooth processes over speedy ones. Modern Italy has inspired a worldwide drive to slow down whole cities with its Cittaslow movement. With an emphasis on heritage, local, human-scale and a “gentle pace”, these cities are finding they have an advantage in attracting visitors. People are hungry to shift down a gear.
Food tastes better when it’s cooked slowly and gently. Clothes feel better when made by hand. Essays in magazines that took months to research and write are more satisfying to read than a thin snippet in the shorts on page 5.
The BBC has a whole radio network called Slow Radio that dedicates half-hour episodes to soundscapes promoted as: “Time unravels in this hypnotic audio journey as we tumble inside the delicate mechanism of the clock” and “immerse yourself in the soundworld of honeybees”… aural antidote to the frenzied pace of modern life.
Young children ask us to give them time to just be. They grizzle or tantrum when faced with too much rush-rush, then fall asleep in their car seats. Oldies say, “Don’t hurry me”, when they mean don’t hurry at all.
At midwinter especially, slowing things down is an important way to stay well and last the distance. Soaking in the bath rather than dashing through a shower, setting intentions in a journal instead of adding to a growing to-do list on your notes app, ending your day with a leisurely stroll around the neighbourhood: these things settle the brain, recharge the batteries and top you up enough to face tomorrow.
So many winter traditions from around the world suggest we take things a bit easier at this time of year.
Whether we are getting hygge or gezellig, we are snuggling up on the couch to binge a show or read the kids a chapter book. Winter wellness retreats and slow stay holidays are inviting us to create space to be still, take time to share a long lunch, play Monopoly right to the very end, or go to bed early then sleep in. Rather than sculling a quick cuppa with a friend, we should linger longer to play a game of cards, nut out a problem all the way through to a solution, finish a conversation, play three rounds of rummikub instead of a hasty one.
Now look, I know we are all terribly busy. I know we have important things we absolutely must get done before we can spare a minute to sit down and take a breath. But life is not a race to the end. We do not get extra brownie-points for fitting one more thing in between all the other things we feel we must do before the sun sets each day. We need to stop and take a reality check.
And I am talking directly to myself here, moving fast is exciting, when we have so much going on that we can barely think, that protects us from asking pertinent questions about stuff that’s happening around us, whether it’s personal stuff, political stuff, professional stuff. That “headlong dash of daily life” as Carl Honoré says (TED Talk: The Power of Slow) keeps us away from actually living.
So as this year creeps slowly through its darkest days, carve out some time to do more of doing less. Everything can wait, and if it can’t, it probably wasn’t worth your time anyway.
