When it comes to gardening, I’ve often had good intentions but failed at execution.

The tray of pansies stays on the porch until it’s too hot to plant them. The flowering vines that were supposed to decorate the back deck instead eat it alive (this kind of thing can easily happen in Georgia).

It’s the same old thing many of us face: We start with enthusiasm but not much of a plan, and then get distracted.

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At the Little Middle School, we have too many books for the shelves.

This is not a problem I used to see clearly. I just figured that we needed more shelves.

That is, until I encountered the work of Dana K. White, a self-professed “deslobification” expert out of Texas who proposes a simple idea she calls The Container Concept: shelves, boxes, bins, closets, and even homes are containers, meant to contain, or limit, the number of items that can be there.

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I had an emergency room trip a few years ago that included IV fluids. I didn’t think much of it at the time — I laid back and accepted the pomp and circumstance of hospital procedure. However, when I later realized that this treatment had cost several hundred dollars, I wondered why I couldn’t have just downed a couple of glasses of water.

Something similar came to mind in an online forum where a parent was asking about things she could buy to make recess easier for a group of children, hers and others, that she’d be educating at home. There were over fifty comments when I happened upon this post, recommending everything from chalk to orange cones to specific toys.

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Have you ever enrolled in a course that you didn’t finish?

I know I have. With online courses, it’s especially easy. It goes along with the books I’ve purchased but never read and the exercise equipment I used once. You just kind of…move on.

Sometimes, dropping out is no big deal. But other times, the results are heartbreaking. Failing to complete high school can limit a person’s job prospects dramatically, and failing to stick to a doctor-recommended diet and exercise regimen can mean the difference between a long, healthy life and a short and miserable one.

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I was working with a thirteen-year-old the other day on a simple rhythm.

When you break it down, you find that any rhythm is just a series of events that occur at specific intervals.

The “one and two and three and four and” occur at precise, even intervals. The X’s represent the places where you would clap or tap or hit a drum or play a note. It’s as simple as that. If you have trouble keeping a steady beat, you can use a device called a metronome to do it for you.

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