The house I live in was built in 1940. Until last fall it still sported the original windows; they were single panes of glass fitted in a wooden frame, and each window had six glass panes on the top half and six glass panes on the bottom half. I spent many years frustrated with my old windows. In the winter they were not only cold, but they also would condense on the inside because of the tempe...

Tires are very important but often overlooked components of auto maintenance. Even the highest-rated performance vehicle can fail you if you have incorrect or worn-out tires. I drive a 4Runner when the weather is too bad for me to feel safe in my Mustang. Living in the mountains you can be caught off guard by snow or ice, and if that happens you don’t want to question the performance of y...

If you're looking for a relatively inexpensive way to add cabinets to a room, these cabinets are a great option. I think we've all seen television commercials and been to home improvement stores to get estimates of what new cabinetry would cost. It's expensive, and who has that kind of money these days? I actually have four cabinets from Woodgate in my picture. There are two 36"...

My Unibody MacBook Pro laptop is one of the thinnest notebooks around. Within a few weeks of buying it, however, I realized that I needed something to protect it from dents and scratches. I had a neoprene sleeve that I put it in when I carried it around in my backpack, but somehow I still managed to find a few blemishes around the edges of the aluminum shell. Speck Products offers a lot of acce...

I saw this humidifier at Lowe's and I had to have it, even though it was more expensive than what I usually pay for humidifiers. I have propane heat and it can get very dry at my house, so I usually buy a new humidifier each year. I have asthma and allergies, and one of my big offenders is mold. I usually don't keep a humidifier longer than a winter season because they are so hard to cl...

I have had allergies as long as I can remember. I did four years of allergy shots, and I take a daily allergy medication. However, I still need something to help keep the dust and pet hair to a minimum inside my house.My mom bought me an Oreck air cleaner for my dorm room when I went off to college. It was great for the 70-year-old dorm I was living in. Now I have one in the living room, one in...

I got this meter a few years ago when I started regularly checking my blood sugar. Like most people, I was a bit apprehensive about whether I could stick myself several times a day. Never mind that I once worked as a phlebotomist and certainly have drawn blood many times: the thought of doing it to yourself is a bit daunting when you don’t know what to expect.I bought this meter on eBay f...

I have oily skin, and acne has been a problem for me almost constantly since 1995. It comes and goes, but nothing I've tried has consistently kept it away. I've tried prescription antibiotics and gels, Proactiv, ClearSkin, and lots of other products for acne-prone skin. They seem to work initially, but they dry my face out or burn after a few days. I eventually abandoned them all becaus...

If I didn't live in an area where dial-up or HughesNet satellite internet were my ONLY two choices I'd have dumped HughesNet yesterday. I've been a customer since 2004. At first I liked it: it was much better than the dial-up I'd had since 1997, and thanks to my new wireless router everyone could be online at the same time. It was pricey at 79 dollars a month, but I thought it w...

This duster has a 15" head, and paraffin wax is baked into the cotton strands of the head to pick up and remove dust, not just push it around on the car's surface. It has a wooden handle, it doesn't scratch paint and it keeps you from having to wash your car so often. The handle is long enough to easily reach all surfaces of my Mustang, and it's lightweight, too. My arms never ...

As someone with asthma and year-round allergies, I'm always looking for something to help decrease my symptoms. I was first given Singulair in 2000, and I've taken it every day since then. At first it was only indicated for the prevention of asthma symptoms, but a few years ago I saw that it was being advertised for seasonal allergies as well. I noticed an immediate improvement in my sh...

I have just recently started online banking, and I love it so far! I have a checking account with Wachovia, and when I found out that online banking and bill pay were free I signed up. With the rising cost of stamps paying bills online really does save me some money. I’ll take whatever I can save even if it’s a few dollars. So far I have paid my credit card bills online and my healt...

My current set of mattresses are a few years older than I am, and even though they were top-of-the line when they were purchased by my parents in 1980 I was looking to improve the quality of my sleep. I wasn’t ready to buy a new set of mattresses, so I started shopping around for mattress toppers. I found a 4-inch memory foam topper on overstock.com that was on sale and I took the plunge....

I needed a new USB flash drive, so I went to Amazon and browsed for a while. I chose this one mostly because it had a good capacity (16GB) and it came in assorted colors. Before, I had a grey USB drive and most recently a black one. It was nice to be able to choose something more colorful.  Available colors are cyan (blue), yellow and pink. Another nice feature is that there isn't a lo...

I hate this mailbox post. I can't believe I paid nearly 80 bucks for it, either. I went out to check my mail one day and my mailbox was lying on the ground. It was still attached to the log that had served as its post for several decades, but the log itself had been broken off at the ground level. I was mad that whoever had run into it hadn't fessed up, but I live in a very rural area a...

During the summer of 2007, I bought a few bottles of clear polish with little stars and hearts floating in the polish. I have since checked for new colors and shapes periodically throughout the year. The best part is that these bottles cost $0.97. And they last forever. I still have my original bottles, although it is difficult to pull the hearts and stars out when the bottle is half full. They...

I have an endocrine disorder that causes an overproduction of androgens. One of the lovely side-effects is acne, even though I’m 26 years old. I never outgrew my teen acne, and in fact my skin has been worse in my 20’s than it was in my teens. I have tried many different concealers and nothing has ever measured up. I usually end up looking worse than I did when I started because man...

I bought my iPod in December of 2003. Yes, it’s over four years old and still working! It may not store pictures or movies and it does have a grayscale screen, but it still works and holds 20 gigabytes of music. But there’s only one way to get my music on my iPod, and that’s with this cable.When Apple first came out with the iPod most models came with one cord that has a Dock ...

Let me first say that I have no idea what these wheels cost in 2008 dollars because they were on my car when I bought it. They were a $120 option available on Mustangs built for the 1965 model year, and I have seen reproduction aluminum wheels made to look just like these steel ones selling for around $160 per wheel. These are originals: they are chrome-plated steel and are only 14 inches in di...

I am always on the quest to find a great shampoo. I got a free sample of this shampoo and figured it would be your standard stinky perfumey shampoo. I hate floral scents, and many clean scents too. I tend to gravitate towards sweet and fruity scents, but it's hard to find these without some floral undertones. I was pleasantly surprised by this shampoo. It left my hair light and clean with a...