My mom has over 30 lamps on the first floor of her house.

Every time we’re there and it’s time to go to bed, we go room by room turning off every single lamp. If my siblings are there, we most likely complain, Why do we have so many gosh darn lamps?

It could be simplified, that’s for sure. You could add an Alexa or Google Home and simply say, “Google, turn off all my lights.”
But that takes out a step. And it takes out a ritual that my mom has cultivated—and that all of her children have taken on.

The art of the lamp light.

Now, outside of the fact that, as you age—calling from personal experience here—overhead light doesn’t do you any justice, especially at night. Super-bright downlighting? You can see the bags, the wrinkles, etc.

But there’s actually something else going on here.
If you take a look at your circadian rhythm—your natural internal clock—the later it gets, the sun goes down and the world around you gets darker.

Think about it.

Daytime is filled with bright light, most likely the sun peeking in through your windows. Even if it’s rainy and cloudy, you want to light up the room during the day. You get more energy from it.

But as the sun sets, the world around you begins to dim.

We’re preparing for bedtime, even if it’s still a few hours off.
So dimming the lights in your space, turning off the overhead light—or possibly just dimming it—and turning on a warm lamp by your bedside table or couch can create this essence of ease.

Lately, I’ve seen more people practicing red light at night, meaning they ask whatever smart lights they have to turn red in the evening.

So, let’s break it down.
Your retina contains melanopsin-sensitive cells that help tell your brain, essentially, It’s daytime—stay alert. Those cells are particularly sensitive to light in the blue-green part of the spectrum.

Red light sits much farther away from that peak sensitivity, so at comparable intensities, it generally has less of an effect on melatonin and your circadian rhythm.

That means red—or simply very warm, dim lighting—at night is less likely to interfere with your body’s natural transition toward sleep.
Brightness still matters, though. An extremely bright red light isn’t biologically invisible. You also don’t need to turn your house into a red-light district every evening to get the benefits (but if it adds a lil whimsy I’m always here for it).

Dim, warm-white or amber lamps can work beautifully, too.

There’s also something wonderfully intuitive about it: natural evening light gets warmer as the sun moves lower in the sky, while bright, blue-rich light is much more characteristic of daytime.
So think about your home lighting as a spectrum:

1. Bright/cool overhead light
2. warm lamp
3. amber lamp
4. dim red light

The farther right you go—particularly in the last hour or two before bed—the gentler that light signal generally is on your circadian system.

So this isn’t a plea that overhead lights are bad.

I’m simply petitioning for you to get a dimmer.

Dim the lights with the sun—or even with the time of day if it’s cloudy. See how it feels to treat your home like it has its own circadian rhythm.
Bright during the peak hours. Slowly dimming as the sun sets.

Maybe you sleep a little better.

Maybe you simply appreciate the changing feeling of the same space you’ve been in all day.

Or maybe it becomes another little ritual: walking around your home at night and turning off all 30 of your lamps.

Here’s to a little more intention every single day,

I’ve started thinking about the way I care for my home a little differently.

Not as cleaning. Not as another thing on my to-do list. And definitely not as something I need to rush through so I can get to whatever is next.

But as a way of tending to the space that tends to me.

Our homes hold so much of our lives. They’re where we wake up, make coffee, have hard conversations, rest when we’re tired, invite people in, cook dinner, get ready for wherever we’re going and return at the end of the day.

And yet, it can be so easy to stop noticing them.

A blanket gets left on the couch. A coffee cup sits on the table. Mail starts collecting on the counter. Nothing is particularly wrong, but slowly the space starts to feel a little different.

I notice that when my space feels scattered, I often feel scattered too.

So lately, I’ve been practicing what I think of as the 10-minute tidy.

It’s not a race.

The point isn’t to see how much you can clean in ten minutes.

Actually, it’s almost the opposite.

Pick one room. One countertop. One corner.

And before you start moving things around, take a second to actually look at it.

What feels off?
What has been sitting there unnoticed?
What would make the space feel a little lighter?

Then start small.

Fold the blanket instead of throwing it over the back of the couch. Put the mug in the sink. Wipe down the counter. Fluff the pillows. Put the book back where it belongs.

But don’t rush through it.

Make it a little meditative.

Sometimes I hum while I tidy.

Sometimes I put on music. Open a window. Light a candle. Let fresh air move through the room.

And sometimes I don’t do anything at all except move quietly through the space.

There is something surprisingly grounding about letting your hands do something simple while your mind gets to soften.

Instead of thinking, I need to clean this, I try to think about it as:

I’m taking care of this place.

That tiny shift changes the energy of the whole thing.

Acknowledge your space.

This might sound a little strange, but I think our homes deserve some gratitude.

Smile when you walk into a room you’ve just tended to.

Notice the sunlight coming through the window. Appreciate the chair you always curl up in. The kitchen that makes your morning coffee possible. The table where people you love have sat. The bed waiting for you at the end of the day.

You can even quietly say thank you.

Not because the house can hear you, necessarily.

But because you can.

Gratitude has a way of making ordinary things feel meaningful again.

And suddenly tidying isn’t about correcting everything that’s out of place.

It’s about noticing what you already have.

Ten minutes is enough.

Your entire house doesn’t need to be finished.

That’s part of the practice.

Set ten minutes aside and tend to whatever you can without rushing. When the ten minutes are over, stop.

Tomorrow, you can tend to something else.

Over time, those tiny moments of care start to change the way a home feels—not because it’s always perfectly clean, but because you’re paying attention to it.

There is care moving through it.

And maybe that’s the bigger lesson I’m learning:

The spaces we care for have a way of caring for us back.

So put the blanket away. Wipe down the counter. Hum a little. Open the window.

Smile at your home.

Thank it for holding you.

And then go on with your day.

Here’s to a little more intention everyday,