To get into speakeasies of yore, you had to knock and the door, waiting for the big guy to slide back the eye slot, and say the secret password. Likewise, in order to get into a hotel room at a great price, you gotta know the lingo to sling. [More]
how-to
55 Ways To Use A Lemon Besides Eating It
By 1.20.11
When life gives you lemons, clean your microwave. That’s one of the 55 different ways you can use a lemon that don’t involve a food recipe detailed over at Coupon Sherpa. I also like the idea of using it to fend off roaches and fleas. Just add the juice and rinds to a 1/2 gallon of water and wash your floors with it. The little buggers hate the smell of lemons! Who knew? [More]
Find Cheaper Textbooks Online
By 1.19.11
The New York Times Bucks Blog has a great feature on finding textbooks for less. There’s a great list of comparison sites in there. Don’t forget too the option of e-textbooks at sites like CafeScribe. Having all the text digitized not only makes it lighter and more portable, but you can easily CTRL-F if you’re trying to find a key phrase or concept. [More]
How To De-Ice Your Driveway
By 1.18.11
It’s a lot easier to prevent ice from freezing on your driveway than it is to chip it off, so the first thing you want to do is get the precipitate off before it has a chance to harden. Once the rain/sleet/wintry mix stops, bust out the shovel and start getting as much slush off as possible. [More]
How To Shovel Snow So The Plows Don't Clog Your Driveway
By 1.12.11
Hooray! Our snow plow saviors are here, clearing off the roads so we can go to Target and buy more Barbasol. Oh no, our friends have shoved a giant pile of snow into our driveway, creating a giant snow wall, a blockade of frozenness that could have been avoided with a little advance action. [More]
Destinkify Your Car With Charcoal And Baking Soda
By 1.12.11
A cigarette smoke-soaked car is a pretty gross thing (to most humans) and getting it out is a chore. But by sprinkling a few common household ingredients around it, baking soda and charcoal powder, you can cut it down pretty effectively and cheaply. [More]
Clean Your Dishwasher With Lemonade Kool-Aid
By 1.7.11
You can spend a lot on fancy cleaners to get the scum out of your dishwasher, or you can just pop in two 10-cent bags of lemonade Kool-Aid in the soap dispenser. [More]
Investigate Companies By Scraping Data Off The Web
By 1.5.11
In order to put together its awesome “Dollars for Docs” database that let readers search to see if their doctor had received pharma company payments ProPublica had to convert data from all sorts of Websites, PDFs, Excel docs and even Flash sites into one system. Not an easy task, but that kind of data wrasslin’ is key for modern investigative journalism, and ProPublica have put together tutorials to show you how you can do it too. [More]
Pack A Suit Coat Without Wrinkles
By 1.3.11
Here’s how to perform that heretofore impossible trick of packing a suit coat without a garment bag or putting up with wrinkles. This soundless video shows how you turn the coat inside out and perform the necessary suit origami so you can pack light and not look like a schlump. Just pay more attention to the moves than to the actor’s shirt. [More]
How Do I Record An Illegal Debt Collector?
By 12.30.10
Shannon keeps getting calls from a debt collector that violate the law so she wants to catch them in the act. The collector calls herself “Investigator” and claims that Shannon is part of a “serious investigation” and has threatened her with jail time if she doesn’t pay up. The “Investigator” keeps calling her at work and has also called up her coworkers and told them that Shannon is part of an investigation. Shannon needs help figuring out how to record these calls. [More]
Make Your Own Glitter Flats At Home
By 12.22.10
Why drop $285 on a pair of Kate Spade glitter flats when you can make some yourself? Over at We Are Not Martha they show you how to take an old pair of flats and turn them into foot bedazzlers with just some mod podge, glitter, a foam brush, clear glaze spray and a mimosa. [More]
Figure Out Your Scrap Gold Value With An Online Calculator
By 12.21.10
Don’t rely on the buyer to tell you how much your gold is worth, that’s a ripe setup for getting a bad deal. Instead, know the melt value of your gold before you go into negotiations. To make that easier, GoldCalc is a two-step tool that lets you do exactly what its name sounds like. [More]
Whittle Down Your Wardrobe Without Stress
By 12.13.10
Reader Chad shares his gradual way of cleaning out his closet. What he does his shove everything to the left side and places hangers in the middle. Then he goes through and picks out his outfits like normal. When laundry happens, all the clean clothes go on the right, but he forces himself to only wear clothes from the left. [More]
Find Foreclosures Using Google Maps
By 12.13.10
You can check out foreclosures all over the US just by drilling down in Google Maps. [More]
Reach Dell Resolution Expert Center
By 12.9.10
Here’s how to contact the Dell Resolution Expert Center (REC), another place to get action on your Dell customer service issue. It’s a special internal escalations team set up to resolve thornier problems that’s been around for several years but many customers aren’t aware of. [More]
Calculate How Many Days Of Work That New Shirt Will Cost You
By 12.8.10
DaysToPay is a handy little site that quickly shows you how long you will have to work in order to buy something. Enter the cost and your hourly wage or yearly salary and it shows you just how much of your sweat is going into that new Xbox Kinect. [More]
See Exactly How Big Your Bank's Bailout Was
By 12.8.10
Just how big exactly was the bailout? And which banks got which kinds of loans? And how many did they get? It’s been hard to figure out, but now the Fed has released deep data on the over 21,000 different loans it made during the financial crisis—loans that were supposed to help encourage the banks to resume lending again. ProPublica has put all the numbers together into a searchable and filterable database so you check and see what kind of treasure chest your bank got. [More]
Make Neat Symbols In The Comments
Do you wish you could make neat symbols like < in The Consumerist comments? Here’s how! [More]