10-minute gardener: excess inventory 

We had some work done on our house and wound up with piles of building materials: old deck boards and concrete pavers. I lovingly refer to these piles as excess inventory. They’ve been stacked up to the side of the driveway longer than I care to admit. Both will most likely be used in our side yard to rehabilitate a small porch off the back of the garage and for our very rustic shed. Moving two heavy piles of stuff from point A to point B hasn’t been high on the priority list. And truthfully, it’s not something I could do in one day.

Inspired by my 10 minutes a day wood chips experiment (that huge pile was leveled in 6 weeks during winter), I started moving the pavers two at a time in any load of wood chips designated for the side or back yard. It took no time at all to reduce the pile. Then I decided to move on to the deck boards, many of which are 10 feet long. That stack is gone, too.

Now I’ve started to view every big project like that giant pile of wood chips: homework, writing, reading, seed starting, cleaning, organizing–you name it. I take one small step every day.