Easy, fun, fast, and strangely enlightening—this week’s slow and simple tip is to make a personal pie chart. Start with your most recent days off. Think about all the ways you spent your time. What got the biggest slice of your time pie? It might be sleep or work or spring cleaning.

So many onions get peeled around here. Garlic and broccoli stems too. Then there’s carrot tops and bits of herb we snip but do not use. These beauties can have a second life. There’s compost or stock—two classic ways to preserve food, save money and use less packaging. But what other hidden potential lives in your refrigerator or pantry?

Many have proposed this thought experiment. Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, asks us to consider how we would feel seeing a forest or river for the first time. How would we respond if we knew they wouldn’t be around tomorrow? To image it gone is to ask whether or not we valued or needed it.

Words spoken can melt in the air. Written, they live on. What a pure delight to give and receive words of love, affirmation, and care.

When so much news seems bad for so long, it’s easy to see the world as dark and chaotic. But care persists. In fact, it’s everywhere. Today’s simple practice is to notice care as you go about your routines.

Do your thoughts wander? Do you fidget much? Is your day or your house or your mind usually busy, even when you’re sitting still? It may be that mindfulness is most useful for those who find it the hardest to quiet themselves.

If you could measure your life in its tiniest actions, what would it add up to? Hundreds of miles of writing, thousands of scoops of coffee and walks through aisles of produce, millions and millions of steps. Every day, you make the coffee, walk the dog, prepare the meal, write the list, clean it up, mess it up, repeat.