Your old college textbooks, gaming consoles and personal electronics gathering dust in the basement or attic may be worth a lot of money. Amazon.com has made it easy to find out if your items are worth anything through its Amazon Trade-in program. Hundreds of thousands of items are eligible; all you do is find your items and ship them to Amazon -- for free. It's as simple as a few clicks of the mouse. You'll get up to 80 percent of the original value of the item back in the form of an Amazon gift card.

Are Post-it notes recyclable? According to the manufacturer, the 3M Corporation, the answer is yes. The company did a recycling trial at various paper mills that make recycled paper. It discovered the proprietary adhesive on Post-its does not interfere with the recycling process. And the colors used to make the colorful notes are easily removed in the de-inking process. So go ahead and toss them into the recycling bin.

Did you know that up to 25 percent of beauty products like lip gloss, makeup and skin care is left inside the bottle and never used because you can't get to it? It's a waste of both product and money. To get out all the product from tubes and bottles, look for inexpensive silicone spatulas that are designed to fit into the bottle's shoulders and along the edges. They retrieve trapped product from under the rim and in hard to reach crevices so you can use each product down to the last drop.