My fiance and I never realized how annoying we truly are until we started living together.

In 2002, I proclaimed that I would not live with a man unless he was my husband or at least my fiance. Now that there are less than three months left on my apartment lease and nine until the wedding, my move-in date has been moved up a bit.

I started spending the night more often after we were engaged. Feeling madly in love made it hard to stay away. Then I had a crazy commuting situation for school, and his place being 15 minutes closer to campus sealed the deal.

Now I'm just used to being there. We enjoy sharing dinner, walking the dogs and waking up together. The problem is, while I've had many roommates in the past, this one seems to be the trickiest.

Jack can't tell which laundry is clean and which is dirty -- because it's all in the same pile on his floor. When I do laundry, mine and his, I hate to see the work I've done end up in one big pile.

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I have complained here about photos of old girlfriends lingering in the spare rooms, but that is just part of a larger issue: Jack is a packrat. I helped him throw away bags of clothes from the 1980s and there is still more to go.

While I trash my fiance for being a horrible cohabitant, I can't deny I have some work to do. Like Jack, I'm also a packrat. It's just that this side of me hasn't been so obvious because the items I've been hoarding remain in my apartment.

Since I have a roommate, Jack isn't over at my place enough to see that I have credit card statements from eight years ago, clothes I haven't worn in the past two years, and boxes and boxes of papers, photographs and random objects that I never look at or use.

I know these will have to go when I officially move in, but for now I feel safe knowing that if I ever need to prove how much I spent on that outfit in my senior year high school portrait, I have the appropriate documentation.

If he were to stop by my place on an average day, he would also notice two or three water glasses collecting on my bedside table. Lazy, I know, but if you've seen the movie "Signs" you know that they may actually come in handy one day.

Jack doesn't care why I collect glasses, he just hates finding them in his room after I leave. I never realized this was a bad habit until he started complaining.

I also never noticed that my cleaning priorities are different than other peoples'. For me, the bedroom is the most important place. I can't handle sleeping on a cluttered bed. For Jack, a bed without sheets isn't a problem.

He only cares about clean dishes, which is made difficult by the lack of dishwasher and the increase in usage since I started coming over.

Many people say that living together is a trial for marriage, but at this point I can escape when needed, like I did last night. I just had to get out of there, so I went to my apartment for a breather.

But come April 1 when I sneak in that last box of pointless-yet-meaningful items, there will be no way out, no opportunity to escape the piles of clothes, the vacuum that lingers in the dining room corner unused, the fact that I'm not such a great roommate either.

I'm sure I'll struggle to find room for my overabundance of clothes, fight for space in the single bathroom, and look for ways to compromise on what stays and what goes. But I'm willing to try, and so is he.

It may look like the cards -- the extra crap that nobody needs, uses or remembers she has -- are stacked against us. But at least Jack and I both recognize we have more than enough room for improvement. Luckily, we have another 55 years to work on it.

Laura Lewis is an adventurous 20-something who knows how to make the most of being single. Her column appears every other Thursday.