A very good thread came up on our regional list that I thought I would
be good to bring over here to the big list. For those of us with
fairly high "P" counts or boxes placed in far-flung locations, the
issue of box maintance causes concern because the more time we have to
spend on maintance means the less time we have to go find some boxes.

The discussion began like this:

> One thing I have concluded about my letterboxing during the past
year -- I spent way too much time doing box maintenance. I've
considered retiring a bunch of boxes, but have a hard time choosing
because I look at the list and think, "yes, but people really liked
that box." I'm not sure what the solution is, but something has to give.

Some of the replies are listed below:

I think the solution is to rely on other letterboxers to:
1) inform you that a box was found or possibly missing
2) perform any maintenance that may be needed and to let you know.

If we all helped each other out with this (and the new tools on the
LbNA site will help) all of our maintenance work would be
efficiently handled.

It's awesome to have people who can check up on boxes and
do any light work on them..changing torn or broken bags or replacing a
box that has been cracked,

Even when boxes are close, we have found that it's just better to
repair a box...notify
the owner. We're already there...no sense in having someone else who's
busy have to run around too.

Yes, I couldn't agree more -- sometimes people don't realize how
important those
"found your box" reports are. As far as maintenance, a found report is
just as good as a visit to the box.

By relying on the kindness of strangers to keep us updated, we have
more time to place
new boxes since we're not always worrying about the existing boxes.

We've even had someone contact us BEFORE they went to find one of our
adopted boxes. They volunteered to do any maintenance if we knew
if it needed something. LBers are great!

Since we really like to take our seat/packs with us on most LB
excursions, we have plenty of room to carry along extra baggies, blank
logbooks, napkins for drying out boxes, duct tape wrapped around a
pencil and a spare container. We have put these "emergency repair"
items to use on several occasions.

We're glad some of the original placers of the early boxes in our
state didn't retire them even when they moved from the area and
apparently are no longer involved in letterboxing. It was exciting to
find the very first box placed in our state!

Enjoy!
---Bindle Babe