Living around the corner from my in-laws over the years, I've been the beneficiary of all kinds of great stuff. We've had babysitters at the drop of a hat and someone to watch over our house when we were on vacation. And our kids get regular supplies of homemade cookies and cakes. Whenever I don't have a tool I need, I can borrow it from my father-in-law, who has a workshop that would make Norm Abrams drool all over his overalls.

Most of our furniture has come from them in one way or another. Some of the pieces have been in the family; others they've found in antique stores and just dropped off at our house. All I brought into my marriage was a 12-inch black and white TV and a rickety kitchen table. (We still have them … somewhere.)

But now that we can't fit any more furniture in our house, we still get stuff on a daily basis. We'll come home from work and find a plastic bag with assorted items: magazines, cookies, holiday decorations, etc. Sometimes, I'll find a box in the front hall and won't even open it. I'll just take it upstairs to open later. Every once in a while, there will be a roll of toilet paper or two.

I'm starting to believe there's a hidden agenda here, that piece-by-small piece, knickknack-by-knickknack item, my mother-in-law is filling up our house, and in the process, emptying hers. At this rate, in about 10 years from now, I will wake up one morning, claw my way through ceiling-high stacks of stuff, walk down the street and find her in a completely empty house, dancing a jig.

However, the flip side of all this is no one, and I mean no one at all (are you listening? You better be!), can give anything to my mother-in-law. She claims there isn't any room in her house for a single extra item, and that everything they have is good enough just as it is. Years ago, when my wife's sister tried to buy them a new TV, she barred the door and made her do a U-turn on the sidewalk to return it.

It's lucky for everyone involved that she wasn't armed.

My wife and I have come to accept this. But this past month, as part of our kitchen renovation, we decided that we'd get ourselves a new stainless steel fridge. Our old one, just eight years old, still works fine. Apart from a cracked crisper drawer, its only real flaw is it wouldn't look right with our new, sleeker kitchen. Part of the problem is that, for the past eight years, my wife has been sticking pictures she's liked on the front door. When she ran out of magnets, she started using scotch tape. One day, when there was no scotch tape to be found, she got out the glue gun. After eight years, there is at least three layers of photos, some so faded, they're unrecognizable. It looks like a fridge and a family album collided at 100 miles an hour.

My mother-in-law's fridge, square and lemony-brown in color, dates from somewhere around the mid-70s. It sits in a small pantry off to the side of her kitchen, where they keep a stool in front of it, something I've always found aggravating. Any time I'm over at their house and am scrounging for something to nibble on, I've had to move this stupid stool out of the way to look for beer. It was only recently that one of my daughters saw me doing this and gasped in horror.

"Dad!" she exclaimed, "The latch is broken! That's how Grandma keeps the fridge door closed so stuff doesn't spoil! If she finds out you're the one who keeps moving it, she'll kill you!"

Knowing she would find out sooner or later, I called my mother-in-law on the phone to convince her I had a solution to both our problems. When they deliver our new fridge, I said, they could just take our old one down to her house. Appealing to her frugal side, I told her it would be a shame to toss out a perfectly good fridge.

"Besides," I said, "I know the kids keep moving that stool on you, and that can be frustrating as heck!"

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