Page break within table rows

Question

I have a longtable that has paragraphs in each cell in the second column. My problem is that when a page ends, it can break only at the end of a row. This often leaves large blank space at the end of some pages, which I have to adjust manually. Was wondering if there is some way I can tell LaTeX to break the page within a row, where needed, so that I won't have to do it manually. Or, maybe some other way of doing it. A minimal example that I could create is as follows:

\begin{document}
\begin{longtable}{lp{0.9\textwidth}}
1 & \lipsum[1].\\
2. &\lipsum[2].\\
3. &\lipsum[3].\\
4. &\lipsum[4].\\
5 & \lipsum[5].\\
6. &\lipsum[6].\\
7. &\lipsum[7].\\
8. &\lipsum[8].\\
\end{longtable}
\end{document}

Here you can see some blank space at the end of the first page. In my work this space sometimes becomes much bigger.

Answer 1

With the help of the enumitem package you can easily and automatically add the number of the current section to the actual item number:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\setenumerate[1]{label=\thesection.\arabic*.}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}
\section{first section header}

\begin{enumerate}
\item \lipsum[1]
\item \lipsum[2]
\item \lipsum[3]
\item \lipsum[4]
\item \lipsum[5]
\end{enumerate}

\section{second section header}

\begin{enumerate}
\item \lipsum[1]
\item \lipsum[2]
\item \lipsum[3]
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}