I’m so happy to put March behind me. The whole month was pretty awful. Sure, there was some really unusually warm and beautiful weather. (80+ in Chicago in March? What planet is this?) But I was too busy trying to resist the urge to dig a hole and crawl in it forever to really enjoy the weather.

About halfway through the month though, when I stopped being sure I’d never feel happiness again, I started a purge of the junk and clutter in our home.

I am a pack rat. I come by it naturally. My dad keeps everything. Old magazines with articles he wants to read, church bulletins, broken things that he could fix. He was even telling me he has old ration stamps back from WWII. No lie.

A combination of those tendencies of mine, a small one bedroom apartment with a serious lack of closet space and sheer laziness led to an embarrassing amount of clutter in our house and garage. And one day, for seemingly no reason at all, I had enough.

Joel and I spent all day on St. Patrick’s Day cleaning out our garage. We threw out a ton of stuff, donated a decent amount of other stuff and then made sure that what we were keeping was neatly in labeled boxes. Then, over the last couple of weeks, I tackled the apartment.

Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that our apartment or garage was Hoarders-worthy. I didn’t work hard on it all day every day the last couple of weeks. But little by little I sorted and organized and last night I realized our apartment is actually clean and organized for the first time in… ever?

There is still a lot of stuff. I will always hold strong emotional value to objects, it’s just in my DNA. I really think that’s okay. However now a bunch of my favorite photos are in frames and hung or displayed. The treasures I’ve picked up on my travels are out on shelves where I can be reminded of the trip on which I bought them. My books are in neat lines on the shelves instead of crammed on top of each other.

But I feel like it’s clean. I feel relaxed in my house instead of guilty that I’m not cleaning. I know where everything is if I need it.

Everything isn’t fixed with a clean house. But it sure is a great start and I hope that it’s an indication that this month will only get better.