Everybody should know how to sweep a floor. I got into the habit in college when I lived with a half dozen other reprobates in a shambolic wood-frame home on the edge of campus on the low Iowa prairie. Our house was a typical undergraduate hovel, with yellowed linoleum tiles that curled up at the seams and a Sears stove that hadn?t been cleaned since the 1950s. Some kind of rodent lived behind it.
One of my roommates, a real freethinker, was the first to take up sweeping. Gradually, it caught on with the rest of us and me in particular. Sweeping perceptibly improved the home in almost imperceptible ways. Though our rooms were still cluttered with books and bongs and beer bottles, and no one could be bothered to take the full garbage bags out to the curb (we stacked them in the kitchen), the floors definitely felt cleaner. The linoleum was still filthy, but there was no grit between the cracks. One could wander around barefoot, without worrying about beer-bottle caps sticking to one?s feet. In time, I came to understand how the faintly rigorous act of sweeping is itself as rewarding as the result of having swept. Sweeping, like washing the dishes by hand after a big dinner party, strikes a satisfying blow against entropy. It?s mechanical and meditative. One can easily get lost in it?if you do it right. Let?s get started.
1. Arm yourself.

Above: A pair of 54-inch brooms from Haydenville Broomworks; according to the makers, “Using the design pioneered by the Shakers, t...