When we moved into The Burrow (a one-ish bedroom apartment) from Connecticut (where we lived in a spacious apartment that took up the entire second floor of a large house plus a small portion of the first floor), we were aghast at how little space we had. The Burrow was really only the size of our living room and kitchen combined of the old place. How would we decide what should come with us and what should stay behind in my parents’ basement?

But decide we did.

And then each time we went up to Connecticut we found a few more things we thought we could fit in — a coat rack, the butcher’s block, the bike rack. And new things seemed to find us down here, too — a mail sorting shelf we house cds in, a comfy chair from my folks’ apartment, a bike for me, the breadmaker.

The only problem with this is that we never actually went about organizing the space in the Burrow. So now it actually resembles a burrow, with stuff all around us.

Friends will tell you that our Connecticut apartment also suffered from the clutter problem. But the difference is that there we had room for clutter. There was no impetus for us to get rid of things — we just reallocated it around the apartment. But here, there is no extra room. The closets are full. The shelves are full. The floor is … ummm… do we still have a floor in here?

But luckily someone else must have had this problem before us because there exists a ritual for people just like us: spring cleaning. We dread it — much like taxes — but once it’s done, we’ll be glad we started.

So the only option left is to start the spring cleaning process and hope that it gets easier as we go along — that we find that we’re getting back a little something in the end, that even if we don’t manage to get rid of any stuff that we can at least get rid of some of the piles of paper that seem to accumulate around us. Because we may have reached the point where the Burrow can expand no more. And it would be nice to find a little breathing room. I know it’s in here someplace … probably under a pile of papers.