Sure. If you get INTO Purgatory, you're going to get OUT, and you'll be taking the Up escalator.
I found a good analogy in C.S. Lewis's Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Eustace has been turned into a dragon by his own greed. He tries to remove the dragon skin himself to become a boy again, but can't peel it off - there's another layer underneath. Aslan (the Christ figure) offers to peel it, and it all comes off at once. Eustace compared it to peeling a scab - painful but good.
That's what's going to happen to us in Purgatory - all the scabs of sin that we've accumulated in our lives are going to be completely removed, and we will finally become the people God meant us to be.
The efforts you make in this life determine whether God will buff those sins off with a nice soft cloth, or whether He will be getting out the WIRE BRUSH.
Speaking as a Lutheran, the central point is that it is God who ultimately must do the brushing for us--our efforts will never be good enough.