Your front yard doesn't have to be perfectly manicured or professionally landscaped to look good. It is, however, your public face -- of sorts. Plus, your neighbors are forced to look at whatever you put out there!

Be a good neighbor: banish the following items from your front yard.

1. Plastic foliage. I'm talking anything you got from a craft store. Like this, for example. Plastic ivy. Faux dried sunflowers. Silk chrysanthemums. Plastic wreaths. Fake autumn leaves strung into streamers. Shudder.

Plastic flowers are tacky in the garden. They're unnecessary. After all, you have Mother Nature at your disposal! Why choose fake flowers? Finally, they evoke the cemetery. Enough said.

As I have said many times before; almost everything has more than one use, and I believe it is our duty as inhabitants of this planet to recycle as many items as possible, sometimes reusing the same item over and over again.

Plastic soda and water bottles are items that can be reused. Join me after the break, as I give you a list of things that you can reuse plastic bottles for, which I found over at Green Home.

My husband and I have a habit of picking up furniture and other stuff that ends up at the end of someone's driveway. What one person thinks of as trash, we happen to think it is an ugly treasure that can easily be converted into something useful and beautiful.

Salvaging is just as nice as shopping at the thrift store, except it is free, since someone put it out for the trash. Over on Craftster, Sharon S. made a bench built for two from two beat up chairs and a headboard she managed to salvage. She cut the rickety chairs apart and used them for each end of the bench. The back of the bench is the headboard.

Although she doesn't really have any instructions on how to make the chair bench, or what hardware she used, Sharon's project is genius and a perfect way to salvage old chairs and a headboard that otherwise might be adding to an already clogged landfill.

Around my house, we are always looking to purge. It's tough when two packrats unite, believe me. Since I really love my husband, the two of us need to learn to love our stuff a little less.

I think he is making progress. Arriving home from the local hardware store a few days ago, he was very excited to tell me about a new product he saw there called the "Bagster." A lightweight bag with the strength of a steel dumpster, on sale at Rocky's Hardware? Very cool, but it gets cooler.

Once you use this little sucker, you make a phone call or go online to schedule a pickup. For a fee, a truck will come and take it away.

Any serious DIY remodeler, crafter, or wood worker will end up with old cans of latex paint, stain, or other finishes lying around the garage or workshop. It is inevitable. The disposal of these cans of doom is a major headache. Gone (and rightly so) are the days of just heaving it into the garbage can. Now days you must either use it, donate it (usually as graffiti cover up), let it dry out naturally, or take it your municipalities hazardous waste disposal site.

Using it is a royal pain in the buttocks because unless you need that color of finish for another project, you are stuck painting and re painting an old board to use up your old material. I don't know about you, but when I am done with a project, the last thing I want to do is spend a day or 3 doing this.

Donating it can also be an issue if the colors you need to ditch are not neutral colors that will blend with concrete or block wall colors around your town. Habitat for Humanity and similar charities may also be interested, but it is a long shot that you will have a color they need or want. It is worth asking though.

Taking it to a hazardous waste disposal site is time consuming, and depending on your city, it may cost you some cash to drop it off for them to take care of.

Did you know that many household items are considered hazardous? This means you cannot just toss 'em in the trash when their useful lives are over. Well...you can just toss 'em in the trash, but that would make you naughty, naughty, and not very green-minded, wouldn't it?

There's no shortage of advice out there on safe disposal for hazardous household waste. But, really, who has time to sit down and read the ten-page brochure your city's waste collection division mailed you? That is, if you can dig it out from the depths of your To Do pile. (I think that's where mine was last sighted.) If you're like me, you'll simply turn to the Web for help. There are fabulous tips like this DIY Life post by Francesca. However, if you're pressed for time and need to save your brain cells for other tasks, check out this fun little interactive tool from the website Learner. It will help you decide whether what you've got is hazardous and therefore requires special disposal. Happy bonus for tired minds: no reading required -- just click on the little pictures to test your knowledge. It's a geeky yet fun way to educate yourself!

I love my neighborhood thrift store, and I shop there quite frequently. Amazingly, I can find items that still have the tags on them. When I lived in the city, I was shocked by what people would throw away in the dumpsters, just because they don't have the time to give an item to someone who would benefit from using that unwanted item.

CC Christiansen is a proud, experienced dumpster diver who is quite shocked at some of what he has found while dumpster diving. He has been kind enough to give us a list of items that he would like us to donate to charity, the thrift store, or those in need. Really, how hard can it be?

When you read CC's list, please hold on to the edge of your seat. I must admit I was incredibly shocked that some people have such little regard for other people, and nearly fell off the chair in disbelief. Please think of others this Holiday season, and give your unwanted treats and presents to your local charity or someone who needs whatever you might want to throw away.

Before you throw out those old CD cases, infant floaties or garage funnels, take a look at this rather unique assembly of small projects created from normal household junk we all most likely have in abundance. I'm still scratching my head on the infant floatie with the lightbulb inside, but I digress.

My favorite out of this collection is the tennis ball ear insulating covers (like those headphones you use when at a firing range). To those of us who are handy daily with a high-speed drill, this could be a cool and very cheap solution. Just remember to get a over-the-head connection that doesn't squeeze that noggin too much.

Another tasty solution from this collection involves an index finger portion of a standard dishwashing glove being used as a dampener of sorts for the end of that salad dressing bottle. How many times have we all accidentally overpoured our favorite dressing onto that nice salad? Talk about a cool kitchen hack that allows neat and easy dressing dispersal.