My son and I moved to a house where my new husband was already raising his 2 kids. We made changes to make us feel comfortable.

• Sara Lyle remarried and, along with her son, moved into a house where her new husband was raising his two children.
• The newlyweds are opposites about many things, from their sports teams to their opinions on clutter.

My husband and I are opposites in many ways. He's always early. I aim to just be on time. He wants things done now. I want them done right. When he's stressed, he paces and downs Diet Coke. When I'm stressed, I take deep breaths and do some journaling.

But, if you love someone and are both committed to the same goal — in our case, "till death do us part" — figuring out how to live together happily is just part of the process.

It's been close to a year since my son and I moved into the house where my husband was already raising his two sons. We've been working on blending a family and a home.

Here are four tips that have worked for us — in the hopes they may be helpful to anyone moving in with a partner who already occupies the space.

1. Be inclusive in displaying keepsakes

When I moved in last winter, my husband and I had several days before our three children — now aged 8, 13, and 15 — came back from spending the school holidays with their other parents. So we took the time to look at the space through their eyes. Specifically, we wanted to make sure the home felt like "ours" to all of us.

We decided to display only select photos and mementos of him and his kids while mixing in pictures of me and my son and our extended families. There were some decorative signs around the house with his family's last name on them, which my son does not share, so those came down, too. More recently, we have printed some nice portraits from our wedding day with the kids that adorn a wall in our dining room.

We also support our sons in displaying photos or keepsakes from their other parents in their bedrooms. Letting them put up their favorite old or new family pictures and mementos helps to create continuity between their lives before and now. Plus, it reinforces a positive sense of identity that celebrates both sides of their background. Ultimately, we don't want them to feel guilt or disloyalty about loving both sets of parents.

2. Leave your ego at the door

I enjoy cooking at home. My husband cooks, too, but — with the exception of grilling — it's not his favorite thing to do.

For me, it's important that a kitchen be highly functional. Him? Not so much. After assessing the "new" kitchen and pantry set-up, I took everything out of the cabinets, cleaned the shelves, and then put items back in places where they were most accessible and useful, getting rid of unnecessary doubles and anything expired. I took a similar approach to paring down and reorganizing our bedroom closets.

Meanwhile, my minimalist husband considers the vast majority of my own collections and decorative accessories as clutter. For example, the idea of putting up the hundreds of magnets I've collected during my travels on our current refrigerator made him twitch. So, instead, he built me a metal display board, which now hangs in our home office and showcases a curated selection of memorable magnets. It's also why I've resisted the temptation to display too many curios or books around the house.

In the end, it takes humility to find common ground, but that's what compromise is all about.

3. Mix and match as much as possible

Moving is expensive. So is feeding five mouths, six including the dog, paying bills, and affording memorable experiences with our sons like summer vacations and other family outings.

Because of this, we've chosen to make our combined furnishings "work" without buying new ones. From his well-loved leather sofas now decorated with my throw pillows to his kitchen table with my kilim area rug underneath, our home decor is eclectic — but then so is our blended family.

In addition, I recommend looking at your partner's furniture versus yours and deciding what will be most practical in the space before moving in — yes, this can turn into a negotiation. Otherwise, your shared space will get overcrowded and quick. And nobody wants to pay to move stuff they'll just have to offload when they arrive. Been there, done that.

4. Don't take it all too seriously

My husband's alma mater is Florida State University, which is the arch-nemesis of the University of Florida, where I went to school. Their annual college football grudge match is coming up in November, so we'll see how that goes. As such, he has his FSU paraphernalia around the house, from popcorn bowls to a placard on our front porch, and I have my UF stuff, including a hand-painted serving platter and some of those aforementioned magnets. We are a house divided.

The same is true of our political affiliations. Come election time, we mostly just cancel out each other's votes.

Rather than letting such things become a source of strife, we take them in stride and even laugh about them. Don't get me wrong, we definitely talk smack about our schools, and we do have some heated discussions about current events.

But, when we eventually make good on that "till death do us part" wedding vow, I believe these sorts of differences and occasional disagreements will make us smile and remember how they brought us — and our kids — closer together.