We have a two-car garage, if only, in fact, we could fit two cars in. But instead of two cars, our garage has become the place where we put stuff we don’t know where to put anywhere else.

This is not surprising, of course. Derived from the Greek term for “Socrates’ dump and used toga shop,” a garage is designed to be an ever-growing receptacle for things that you don’t really use but can’t bring yourself to get rid of.

Because, you know, there may come a time when you’ll actually need that 1962 road atlas with built-in illuminated compass.

Until you can’t get one of the cars in.

So last weekend we decided to clean out the garage because, of course, what could be more pleasant on a 97-degree day than covering yourself in garage dust?

In a systematic way, we folded up the dust, placed it in bins, arranged the spider webs in alphabetical order and started finding things we had pretty much forgotten about or were contractually obligated to be surprised that we still had.

Here is a list of some of the stuff we found, and I only wish I was making some of this up:

■ Seven tennis rackets, although neither my wife nor I have played tennis since I made the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, which is so long ago I barely remember it.

■ A bag of 47 used tennis balls, two of which actually had some air left in them and were not flat. The other 45 would be perfect as yellow coffee table coasters.

■ My daughter’s middle school bicycle. The bike is so old it was actually originally called a junior high school bicycle.

■ My wife’s middle school bicycle. At one time, the bicycle had 18 speeds. Now, it only has two — stop and please, damn it, stop.

■ A leather-bound collection of the entire works of Robert Louis Stevenson. We had protected this valuable, irreplaceable, unique collection by jamming the books into a rotting carton and covering the works with turpentine-enhanced painting rags. After careful inspection, the rags seem to be OK.

■ The guarantee and operating instructions for three lawn mowers ago.

■ My daughter’s third-grade wall poster for her report on the Erie Canal and how it impacted the works of Robert Louis Stevenson.

■ My first first-baseman’s glove, which I was particularly surprised to find since I played shortstop.

■ Nine barbecue tools, including the hamburger flipper, the fork, the tongs, the crud scraper, the basting brush, the eye puncturer and three metal skewers stuck together with 1997’s leftover zucchini.

■ Six camping chairs, although we have never gone camping and as long as they insist on camping being outdoors, on the ground, with snakes around, we never will.

■ Forty-nine cans of paint, many of which were gluten-free but none of which, apparently, match any paint that’s currently inside or outside our house.

We did not find our second car