We still haven’t found a solution for storing all of our clothes. We’d tried the stackable wood cube shelving and bought fabric drawers to go inside, but the drawers didn’t fit. For the moment, I just want to get everything off of the floor.

And yes, thinking of ourselves as one unit rather than two separate individuals is a big change. It’s the first time I’ve been willing to do that with someone. Darren and I are both independent oldest children, so I’m glad that we’ve been able to collaborate on the decision making, financially and organizationally.

I think when we first started living together, our main concern was getting rid of half of everything we owned. That was easy to do because neither of us had nice things. Then, we moved on to the smaller stuff. I hate it when the bathroom gets cluttered, so we put in temporary shelving. Josh bought organizers for mail, coupons, magazines, DVDs…anything that could get dumped on a horizontal surface and live there for a month. That honestly is the one thing that changed my life; now I can’t stand it when papers and mail pile up.

I recommend the Bed, Bath and Beyond plastic organizational shelves. They come in a lot of different sizes and styles. The plastic stacking drawers sold at Target are also good for closets; we use a lot of those here because our bedroom is so small.

Once we began the adjustment process, I quickly understood why a lot of serious relationships don’t make it. That first year was the hardest. Because we were both accustomed to living alone, we had to learn each other’s habits and modify our own. In our case, he moved into my house, which was hard for me to deal with at times. I wanted him there, but occasionally I caught myself mumbling, “If he changes around my kitchen cabinet organizational system one more time, I swear to God…” Switching my mindset from that of a single person to that of a person in a family unit was tough, especially because we were both relatively young (23) and knew that this was a permanent change.

We learned to live with it, but moving to Chicago is what really cleared the air for me. The chance to start over together in a completely new place allowed us to truly build from scratch, armed with the knowledge we already had.