Dear Crabby,
I hate having to clean our basement, but it must be done. We cannot even walk through it anymore and we need to find things that are down there sometimes. Have you figured out the secret to getting a huge project like this done more easily?
Sincerely, Sloppy Joe
Dear Sloppy Joe,
I certainly am not offering to help you, if that is what you are asking! My father taught me years ago to avoid a couple things: when people are moving and ask for help, or when people are cleaning out their basement and ask for help. However, I too have found that the basement and other storage places can get out of control and then getting them organized again becomes a monumental task. My father also taught me that the hardest part of any project is getting started. Kind of like the old Chinese saying, “The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step!” Once you roll those sleeves up and dig in, the progress may come slowly, but it does come surely. The next difficult decision is whether to let things go. Everything appears to have value at 
first. You need to be able to say, “Do I need this immediately? If not, when will I use this?” If you cannot answer either of those questions, then you should probably let the item go. Now, I do not recommend that you make this decision for other people. My father also taught me that example of what not to do. One time when he was helping someone clean out their basement furniture, they said they weren’t sure what to do with it all. My father looked it over and noticed it was all in really bad shape and may have even had bugs in some of it. He said he had a great use for it and would make sure that it would go to the right place. He loaded it all up and without telling the owner took it all to the trash dump! It was all well and good until a week later when the owner changed her mind and came back to my father and asked to get it back. He went from hero to zero in a matter of seconds in her mind! So that is why I do not help others with their tough decisions and big messes – that and I am sort of lazy by nature anyway! But I do recommend that you just get started and see how it goes. You might only get a little bit done the first day, but as momentum picks up, you will gain speed and see more and more progress over time. They also say, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” So even though you have to work slow and steady, the results will make you happy. I hope that helps and I hope I was clear enough that no one else will ask me to help with physical labor ever again.
Sincerely, Dear Crabby
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