But when we combined our two households after our August wedding, we discovered that we not only had something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue ... we had two of each of them, and then some.

We found out very quickly how much junk we had when we tried to put it all together in one house. We had a lot of stuff!

My immediate thought was that we needed to take a couple of trips—one to the Goodwill and one to the dump. Natalie had another idea.

"Why not have a garage sale?" she suggested. "You know, one man's junk is another man's treasure."

I looked over her stuff. "I'm not sure anyone will treasure a chair with three legs," I said.

"You never know," she said. "Someone might want to work on it. Anyway, I'm not giving away my things. There might be some antiques here."

You see, we were looking at this ... stuff ... through two different sets of eyes. She's a girl who likes to check out garage sales on a Saturday to look for little treasures; I'm a guy who likes to sit on the couch on Saturday and watch college football. She's a girl who might like to check out the flea market on Sunday to look for trinkets; I'm a guy who likes to sit on the couch on Sunday and watch pro football. See the difference?

At any rate, you're right—we had a garage sale. We spent a couple of Saturdays ago broiling in the sun, moving and removing "treasures" from her garage and driveway. By the end of the day, we had a egg carton filled with cash. Minus the money I'd thrown in for change and our expenses, we netted a cool $37.36. Hey, not bad for 16 hours work, huh?

But, then, that's the good news. The bad news is that we're going to do it all again ... this time at my house. To make room for new stuff, we have to get rid of a few things ... surprisingly, most of my stuff!

So I spent last weekend going through my treasures to see what I wanted to keep, what she was going to let me keep, and what we could sell.

"Hey, this would look good in the living room," I said.

"It's a football helmet," she replied.

"Yeah, but it's signed by all the players on Kevin's football team," I said, "and I paid about $250 for it at the high school fundraiser. It means a lot to me."

"Fine," she said. "It will look great in your office."

"OK, then how about my autographed baseball pictures," I said. "I have Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Bob Feller, Duke ... "

"They'll look perfect in your office."

"What about all the baseball bats, the autographed baseballs, the bobble-head dolls—we have Barry Bonds!"

"Office, office and did you say Barry Bonds? Office!"

Well, one thing was becoming very clear ... I was going to need a bigger office.

Then there were the things like the blue-and-white-checkered wingback chair, the bar with the Giants and A's barstools, the wicker coffee table, the weight bench and 160 pounds of free weights, the Oriental lamp.

"Those are all great garage sale items," she said. "See, you have a lot of great things we can sell at a garage sale ... like that old recliner chair in the family room."

"No, not my recliner chair," I said firmly. "You're not selling my recliner chair!"

"Fine," she said approvingly. "It will look great in your office."

Now, if I just get rid of this desk, this chair, this computer ...

Want to talk? Call me at 408.354.3110, ext. 31, or drop me a note at dsparrer@svcn.com.