DIY Life

I'm being literal here --- I once vowed to grocery shop only at the 99cent store in Los Angeles for an entire month. Although I filled up on quite a few Teddy Grahams, generic Goldfish crackers and granola bars, I found that it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to put together a few nutritious meals every now and then. And after stumbling upon this video, I've learned even more tips to use! Want to see for yourself (of course you do!)?:



A few key tips to keep in mind!:
1. Always check expiration dates. Dollar-store items sometimes have a short shelf life.
2. Keep your pantry stocked with staples that are not always available in dollar stores, like butter.
3. The five best dollar-store buys are cleaning supplies, gift wrap, snacks, shampoo, and kitchen accessories.

That's it! You'll be a dollar store shopping pro in no time!

I invested in my first Costco membership two years ago, despite my reluctance to do so. I'm a firm believer that living simply is the way to go, and shopping at a mega-warehouse such as Costco just seemed to contradict my "Simplify!" mission statement. After all, there's nothing simple about 200 rolls of toilet paper in a 900 square foot apartment.

Yet I was pleasantly surprised when my grocery bill was cut in half at the end of the year. It turns out that by following a few key rules of bulk shopping, you really can save in a huge way. Here are the ground rules I stick to --- whether I like it or not:

1. Only purchase items that you regularly buy. My mother always told me "It's not a sale if you don't need it," which I realize now as an adult, is the truth. Start out buying household items that you use often, such as toilet paper, hand soap, trash bags, paper towels and shampoo/conditioner.

2. Only purchase items that you have room to buy. My first Costco trip was an incredible waste, as I found myself handing out boxes of minute rice, bottles of ketchup and packages of TV dinners after realizing my kitchen cabinets couldn't sustain the sheer amount of food I had brought home. So if you don't want to hand out mustard to your Trick-or-Treat'ers this year, be sure to follow this important rule.

3. Only purchase items that you won't eat in bulk. The truth of the matter is that if it's in your home, you'll eat it. If you're trying to cut back on your portion sizes, bulk food shopping may not be for you. The temptation is to finish off the remaining food in your home, and no one needs a triple-super-sized pack of Oreos. If you find that bulk shopping is truly cheaper for your family, try storing the excess food in a separate area of the home or a less-visited pantry. Keep it out of immediate reach, but in a consistent place so that you won't forget you've already purchased it!

And of course, the golden rule? If you find yourself throwing away a regular-sized item, don't ever purchase this in bulk. Seems like a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised how often I've toted home fresh blueberries and promised myself I'd eat them all...

It seems that when I look at our budget, the greater portion of our expenses seem to be spent on food. Yes, we are self-proclaimed Foodies, so we tend to splurge on good things to eat. The good news is that there are ways to save money in the kitchen; your love of food doesn't have to break the bank.

1. Make a weekly menu and shop accordingly: Creative meal planning wastes less. You'll be less apt to buy things that aren't on your grocery list, and you'll have everything you need for the week's meals, thereby saving gas on fewer trips to the grocery store.

2. Use extra foods to make soups or stews: It's OK to buy that jumbo bag of broccoli florets. After you use what you need in Tuesday's stir-fry, throw the rest into a pot with onions, broth, some dried beans, and some seasonings. The result will be a healthy soup that you can freeze for lunches later. Some of my favorite meals have been the clean-out-the-refrigerator-stews!

Looking for deals on DIY-related gear?

If you're staying home this 4th of July weekend, it's a good time to work on the house and yard. Let's visit the big boys of home improvement supplies: check out July 4th deals from Lowe's here, and The Home Depot here. Neck-and-neck as always, both stores are offering 10% off major appliances ($397 and up) and deals on carpet installation.

Lowe's is offering gift cards in return for purchases, too, starting at a $10 card for purchases from $99 to $199 and going up to $100 cards for purchases of $600 or more. Nice to get something in return for all that spending, huh? Oh, and Lowe's is also offering 10% discounts this weekend for military personnel and their immediate families.

Sunday is Father's Day and, yes, despite what your dad (or spouse) says, he probably does want a gift. Time to shop!

First piece of advice: skip the big box stores unless you're utterly desperate. Check out their websites and you'll see what I mean. Lowes has a pretty good Father's Day gift-finder page. You can search products based on the type of dad you have. (Lawn dads, wood-working dads, etc.) However, it's hardly inspiring stuff. Example: their suggestion for the dad who has everything? A gift card.

The Home Depot does a little better with its online gift center, but the suggestions are uniformly dull... or just plain stupid. I mean, do you know anyone who would buy dad a $699 pressure washer for Father's Day? Oh, but it's not just Home Depot and Lowes pitching dumb Father's Day gift ideas. Amazon: come on!

Grab your hip, new reusable shopping tote and let's grab some groceries. But, wait! First, check out the Reader's Digest 10 tips for smart food shopping. It's a quick and easy-to-read guide for staying on track once you step inside the store. Stay on track how? Answer: in every way -- in terms of your budget and your health goals.

Here are my three faves -- all ideas that have worked for me lately:
1. Limit your trips. I try to pick up extra bread and milk when I shop so as to avoid extra runs to the store. The less I go to the supermarket, the less I spend each month.
2. Avoid shopping on an empty stomach. An oldie but a goodie. This is probably the best shopping advice out there!
3. Follow the walls. The less processed stuff you buy, the less money you'll spend and the healthier you'll be eating. Try it. This tip really works!

Enjoy these ideas? Check out Francesca's tips on how to be a grocery super shopper!

A few months back, the control knob on my clothes dryer broke. Since it involved only a minor DIY repair job, I thought this a fab opportunity to try shopping for spare parts online. Result? A 10 out of 10 experience. I used PartSelect and was really happy. Other likely-looking choices include PartStore and big box store sites like SearsPartsDirect, to name just two of the many sites out there.

I was thrilled with how easy it was to locate such a tiny and obscure plastic doo-dad via the Web. Thrilled because ordering it online was possible in the first place. Also thrilled because such sites make simple appliance repairs easier for the beginner DIY'er. Interested? After the break, I'll share what you should know before cracking out that credit card:

The Speed Factor. Buying spare parts online saves you lots of valuable time. In the olden days, you would have to flip through the phone book to find likely parts suppliers. Then you would have to make some phone calls. Next, you would waste at least an hour driving to and from the supplier.

We all find ourselves at the hands of the "experts" a retail stores. We are at worst forced to endure smarmy, overconfident, condescending know it alls whose only joy in life seems to be doling out tid bits of information a little at a time, always withholding that last piece of vital information that would stop you from, say,flooding the house or formatting the hard drive.

At best we find can someone willing to help, provided we don't come off as too aggressive, belligerent, or just plain rude in a futile attempt to get a preemptive strike in in case they happened to be one of the "bad" experts.

Here are a few tips to help make sure that the expert you encounter will be forth coming and helpful to you:

Saving money always matters, but this is the season where a little savings at the grocery store can leave room in the budget for a few extra Christmas gifts, it's that much more important. It seems like our local newspaper has tripled in width to accommodate all the holiday flyers, and digging through to find the grocery coupons can leave your head spinning.

A sale doesn't always mean savings. You'll head to one store because of a deal on meat, but if that store regularly has higher prices on bread and cheese, which you'll grab while you're there, you might not be saving on your total purchase.

The Grocery Guide will take all the stress out of shopping and point you to your highest savings. Simply put in your zip code and they have the prices from your local stores. They track flyers and coupons, offering the biggest savings and saving you the trouble of finding the best deal for your shopping list. Compare your options, search for coupons and print recipes.

The Grocery Guide includes hundreds of stores across the country. They are missing some of the smaller neighborhood stores, but those aren't usually your most economical choices anyway. Don't spend your holidays walking up and down the grocery store aisle comparing prices, do a little search at home then head out with a plan.

[via: Lifehacker]

Dust is a major problem in my shop and most home wood shops. My tiny shop has more dust than projects in it. Not only does my enormous "portable" wet/dry vac suck at sucking and is even worse at filtering, it's a major roadblock to sweeping up at the end of the day. I've long dreamed of buying one of those big suck-your-brains-out dust vacuums that they sell at tool centers. However, even those have bags for filters and I never liked the way the old household bag vacuums would billow dust every time you turned it on. I imagined that the big monsters probably did the same thing only more. That can't be good for the lungs!

Enter Bill Pentz, woodworker, geek, and DIYer extraordinaire. Bill designed and built his own dust collection system that out performs just about everything on the market. His system really sucks!!

Most manufactured dust collection systems available to the home woodworker provide miserably low air volume and static pressure. According to Bill, none of the dust collection systems available in retail outlets provide even half of the air flow necessary to actually keep the dust from escaping large tools like your table saw, planer, jointer, or router table. The dust that does get swallowed up is often just spit back out into the air. Many of the filters don't actually filter the size of particles they advertise. Of course, we all could have guessed that much of marketing departments! In addition, course sawdust and the inevitable chunks of debrit damage even the best cartridge filters. A cyclone seperator like Bill's keeps all but the tiniest particles from getting to the filter allowing it to last indefinitely.

If you have a warranty, I'd advise not even touching your own car. You'll likely void the warranty and cause yourself a bigger headache than whatever was wrong with the car in the first place.

If your warranty has expired, and you're on the hook for any parts and repairs, then you could save a lot of time and learn some new things by diagnosing and doing the work yourself.

According to Mark Gittelman, author of 'Diy Car Repair and Troubleshooting Car Problems', most people make the mistake of skipping stages in the diagnostic process. Here are the steps he advises when taking on DIY car repair:

Coming into this blog post, number four in my series about building your own computer, I finally have had some of the components delivered. I have included some pictures and information to keep you up to date, but we're not nearly ready to begin assembling parts. I'm hoping that my editors aren't getting too annoyed that I haven't started actually screwing parts together yet. Perhaps I should have told them that I didn't have $900 dollars to plunk down to buy all the parts at one time. Oh well, my intention was to walk you through this slowly any way. You can see my first three lead -in posts via this link!


This week I went through the process of choosing my hard drives. Yes, I mean drive(S), as in more than one. After getting various opinions on the subject I have decided that my new computer shall be set up with two hard drives. One will serve for daily use and the second one will be a fully updated backup kept on hand as an instant replacement just in case the first one fails. It was suggested that I could run the two hard drives in tandem, using one for the operating system and one for image storage which is a fine idea also but I have determined that I do not need that volume of data storage capacity yet and that option would still leave me needing a back up solution. I can always throw another drive in there. That's one of the advantages of building a computer from scratch.