If you are ready to get your yard ready, but you feel compelled to do it cheaply…or free, here are some ideas that can get you going in the right direction:

1. Golf Shoes - Put on a pair of golf shoes and take a stroll around your yard for 15-20 minutes.  Make sure you get into the corners and that you follow a pattern so you can hit every part of the yard.  In the spring, you should core aerate your yard.  If you don’t want to rent an aerator, golf shoes will do an OK job and won’t cost you any money.
2. Overseeding – I can’t help you with this one, other than to say that you should reduce the size of your yard by setting up a garden.  This will reduce the amount of seed you need to purchase.  You can also just skip overseeding and let your yard thicken naturally.  This will take years, though so be prepared to have some patience while your neighbor spends hundreds of dollars to make you look bad.
3. Fertilizer – YES, you can make your own fertilizer.  Instead of wasting two more sentences talking about something I know nothing about, here are some links where you can find out more:
   • Make your own fertilizer
   • You can make your own fertilizers
   • How to Make Your Own Fertilizer
4. Catch the Rain -  If you want to water your yard and not have to pay a fortune, you can catch the rain water.  This is something I am going to try this year.  It’s somewhat difficult if you live in an area that has a lot of mosquitos because they breed in water.  You can’t have an open-top rain catcher.  Here are some links to some ways to make your own rain catcher.
   • How to Make Your Own Rain Barrel
   • How To Build A Rain Barrel
   • Make A Rain Barrel

I hope this information helps you save some money and get your yard ready for spring.

Since clothing is an area where I don’t have a lot of expertise (at least that is what my last few girlfriends have told me), here are some videos containing ways you can save money on clothes, but keep from looking like bum:

• How To Save Money on Back To School Clothes
• Save Money on Clothes – From GoodHouseKeeping
• How To Make A Hem
  
• Swap Those Clothes
• Get Custom Made Shirts Cheap
• How To Wash Ties – I used to just throw mine away when they developed stains
• Shoe and Sandal Repair
• Clothing Care

If you have any tips on saving money on clothes, please leave it in the comments…

After spending about 15 minutes in the store, I walked out with 4 shirts for $15 (1 was $6 and the others were $3). As soon as I got home, I dropped the shirts in the wash and after drying them I ironed them all. It was at this time that I noticed a stain on one of the shirts. It was faint, but I figured a little Shout could get it out. No go on that, so I soaked and scrubbed that spot. I’ll let you know if the spot comes out.

The shirts all look good. I spent $15 for 4 shirts when I would have spent that amount on 1 shirt if Value City had been on the way home instead of Goodwill. I’ll go back either to that Goodwill in a couple of months to get more shirts, or I’ll go to another Goodwill this weekend. Another good thing about Goodwill is that you can be 100% assured that each location has a different inventory.

P.S. Of the 4 shirts, 3 are recognizable brand names. That’s just in case you are hung up on status. No one has to know where the clothes came from.

I didn’t think you could, but check this out.  I found this in a post on about.com.  Just like the other day, when I reached the end of the Internet, I thought I had seen it all.  Check out the post for a step-by-step instruction list on how to make one of the bracelets.

A while back, I wrote a post about using CFLs to reduce energy consumption in the home. Several of the comments mentioned that improper disposal of these bulbs can be a health and environmental hazard.

It turns out that Home Depot is about to start a recycling program specifically for CFLs. With their 1800+ stores in the US, this will be the biggest recycling program of it’s kind.

Check out this post on CFL recycling, written by Michael Ramses, for more details.

Other stores either have small recycling programs for CFLs, or are planning on starting similar programs to the one Home Depot is starting. Those stores are:

• Ace Hardware
• Menards
• Waste Management

Here is a link to an article on the EPA web site concerning CFL recycling.

Do you have boxes of old business cards stashed away in your desk drawer? I do. As a matter of fact, I have 6 boxes of old business cards, all from difference places or for various business that never got off the ground. I’ve been contemplating what to do with them. One thing that naturally happens to them is that they make good note cards. Quick notes and short to-do lists fit nicely on the back of those old cards. I searched for other ideas for old business cards and I found the to-do list business card idea first. Another way I end up using them is as bookmarks. These are the best two ideas I found. Some of the others were to use the old cards as a fingernail cleaner, toothpick, noisemaker for bike wheels, and last but not least…as a wedge to keep that unbalanced piece of furniture from wobbling.

By the way, all of the information on the card above is still good, however, I don’t take on that type of work any longer.

I was able to win, for lack of a better word, some clothes for both of my daughters on FreeCycle. Freecycle is a site where people offer things to the rest of the readers, for free. Also, people post what they want to acquire. You can go the www.freecycle.org to find out the URL for the local freecycle list near you.

If your trash hauler charges you to take your recyclables, kick them to the curb and do your recycling at your local community recycling center. Most communities have one. Check with your city hall for details. There is no reason you should have to pay someone to take something away, just to have them get paid again for selling what they took. You can also check out the Find a Recycling Location New You post over on SabraDuffiney.com.

Don’t go buy a new shower curtain/liner when the old one gets so much soap scum on it that you can’t see through it. Make it last longer by washing it. Put the curtain/liner in the washer with a rough towel. Add 1/2 cup white vinegar and 1/2 cup detergent. The vinegar will help get rid of the soap scum. Do this every few months and you’ll be able to keep your shower curtain/liner free of mildew and soap scum.

Electronic Picture Frame – You can actually tear the box apart and build one of these custom frames, however, I think you should just get a 15” or 17” LCD monitor and hook it to the out-dated CPU. You can then load up your pics, set up a screen saver picture display (XP screen saver will do it) and you are good to go. You just need to find a place to hide the CPU. If you hide the CPU in a place that is not easy to access, make sure it is networked so you can update the picture repository across your network.

Web Browser ONLY – XP – Uninstall all of the software and only use the machine to browser the Internet through Internet Explorer. {How-To Details}

Web Browser ONLY – Linux (Knoppix) – Download Knoppix, create a bootable CD from the .iso image, and book your machine from it. No hard drive needed.

Router/Firewall – (requires 2 network cards) – You can use one of the applications listed below to turn your machine into a router. You may be able to do this without a hard drive.

• FREESCO
• IPCOP
• Smoothwall
• Firestarter
• Coyote Linux Personal Firewall
• Shorewall/Shoreline
• Mason
• Vyatta
• floppyfw
• FireHOL
• Guarddog
• Turtle
• m0n0wall
• Endian
• pfSense
• LutelWall
• Zorp
• ClarkConnect
• Devil Linux
• Sinux
• Kaladix
• SafeSquid

Overgrown MP3 Player/Media Server (requires sound card) – Load up the machine’s hard drive with MP3 files and use Windows Media Player to play them. This would be the only use for the machine.  Turning an old machine into a media server is one of the more common uses for an old machine.

• Jinzora
• Firefly
• TVersity
• MediaTomb
• LIVE555
• MythTV
• Icecast
• Helix
• LinuxMCE
• Darwin Streaming Server
• GNUMP3D

If that’s not enough information, check out the Virtual Hosting Blog, where you can find a list of 100 apps to use in setting up your Media Center PC.
File Server/Network Attached Storage – Uninstall all of the software, clear off the hard drive of everything that is unnecessary, and make a file share available on your network. You now have Network Attached Storage.  Here are some applications that may assist you even further:

• FreeNAS
• Samba
• iFolder
• NASLite
• Openfiler
• CryptoBox

FTP Server – Acquire Knoppix or another free version of Linux, boot it up, and run the FTP server application. Port-forward port 21 to this IP address and there you go…an FTP Server.

• Setting up a local web server in Debian Linux
• The Apache Web Server
• Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) LAMP Server Setup
• Quick Linux Server

Test Web Server (light traffic load) – You can set up a test version of your web site on this machine. As long as your traffic load is kept low (just you), there should not be a problem with this. I’ve run a production web server (IIS) on a Pentium 75.

X10 System Controller (see www.x10.com) – X10 is a technology that allows you to control various devices using the electrical system as it’s network. Check out the link for details.

Proxy Server – A proxy server can speed up access to commonly used sites.

• Setup a transparent proxy with Squid in three easy steps
• Minimal Linux Proxy
• 3Proxy

Video Monitoring System (requires a web cam) – Set up a webcam on this machine and monitor your cat or dog while you are not home, or, monitor your spouse.

Trade it in (HP trade in program) – HP has a trade in program. This is only good, though, if you are spending money on a new machine.

Print Server (requires a printer) – Install as many parallel ports as you have printers, share those ports/printers out, and you now have a print server. {How-To Details}

TV (requires TV card) – Grab a TV card and install it, connect it to the cable or satellite connection, and watch TV to your heart’s content.

Store Digital Photos – Follow the steps for building a file server, then store all of your pics on it. You can even point you Picasa, Flickr, etc. to the share.

Visitor computer – If you have people staying with you periodically, I’m sure you’ve experienced the issue of allowing them to use your computer. To avoid that, take the old machine and get it all networked in the guestroom at a small workstation-like desk. They’ll feel like they are staying at The Hyatt. Hopefully, you won’t have to deliver room service.

Experimental PC – You can beat this machine up, install anything, then just wipe the hard drive and reload.

Recording Studio Machine – Start a podcast or do voice-over work and use this machine to record your sound. If editing is necessary, that can be done on another machine. {How-To Details}

Alarm Clock (requires a sound card) – there is software out there that will play an MP3 or WAV file on a schedule. Install this software and use the machine as an overgrown, overstated alarm clock. You could probably even play a CD to wake you up. {Download Software}

Email Spam Server – You could use this machine to start an online email spamming (advertising) business. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, this machine can be sending out emails.

Recipe Workstation for Kitchen – Grab a recipe application, maximize it, get a keyboard condom, and you are done. {Free Recipe Software}