Any Do-It-Yourself project is made or broke in the planning stage. Like an old friend once repeated over and over again, “Proper Planning Prevented Poor Performance”.

Just in planning can be expensive. Going to the library looking through dozens of magazines for the perfect bathroom design. Then going from one hardware store to the next to find the right faucet or right color of paint. Then there is how is it all going to be arranged.

Like so many people have told me, as the project was starting to come together, they started making little changes. A walk outlet over the vanity needed to be moved 12 inches to the left, because it was to close to the sink. There was no place to put the toilet paper holder. The bathroom door was swinging the wrong way. All of these do at to the cost of a remodel real quick.

On television there is this commercial where a well dress lady comes on and talks about certified pre-owned cars. Her whole pitch is that they are so like new you are getting new most people cannot tell the difference. Her closing line is, “Why pay the difference when you can’t tell the difference.”

About 4 blocks down the street of the car dealership that is promoted in the commercial is a recently build dealership of just certified pre-owned cars. Instead a mixture of several makes and models, these are just Nissan’s. This raises the questions, “Are they really good as new, without paying the price of new?”

Call them pots and pans, or cookware both terms mean the same thing. Either way buying new cookware is not something you do every month or even every year. The last set of cookware we bought has lasted us about 15 years.

I still have the old cast iron set of cookware my mother brought out from Arkansas when she married my dad. About once or twice a year, I will pull down that old cast iron deep dish fry pan. Then I bake a pineapple upside down cake. Afterwards it goes back on display.

I don’t know what criteria goes into your considerations for new cookware. Is it price? For some people that is a big one. Some people must have their cookware the right color, to match the rest of the kitchen. Some are attracted to a particular style. What ever type of cookware excites you it must be functional and last more than just a year or two.

Blenders are usually something you get as a wedding present. It last five to ten years. Then you go down to K mart or Wal Mart and get another.

Buying a kitchen blender, to many people, sounds like a rather simple task. However, the required functions of a blender can make a big difference as to what type and brand of blender needs to be chosen.  Different types of kitchen blenders does different functions better than others.

You will see in stores two basic types of blenders. The jug or jar counter blender which is the most common. Then you have what is called the stick model which is sometimes called a hand or immersion blender.

Like anything else, I want the best price for the best possible quality. This is especially true when it comes to a household appliance that I am going to use everyday. That is our microwave oven.

We got our current counter top model about 4 years ago. It has been faithful. We have had to clean it when things explode or spill inside. All in all I must admit it has been a very faithful part of our kitchen.

The microwave oven’s history can be traced back to the early 1945. That was when Laurence Marshall was on the edge of financial ruin with his company named Raytheon. At that time Raytheon start to develop a cooking oven that used radio waves. It took until the 1970′s that Raytheon and other U.S. manufacturers started to mass produce the microwave oven as a desired household appliance. It sold for starting at $200 and up to a couple thousand dollars.

I remember a time as a teenager we go through the neighbors trash just to see what we could find. This was at the local dump outside a small town, in northern California. People saw us and thought we were looking for old aluminium and copper to sell at our version of the recycling center, in 1968. In addition to the  aluminium and copper we found old love letters, adult magazines, and credit card numbers. Of course we only used what we found for our amusement.

Today, there are unethical people going though other people’s trash, before the garbage man comes to get information for identity theft. This could be a credit card offer, or a bill from a life insurance company, or even an electric bill. You see adding up these bits and pieces of information, along with the internet can yield enough information for identity theft.

Last week when I walked into the place where I get my haircut, I was greeted by the owner. In her hand was a plastic shopping bag that containing a DVD player. As she raised the bag to my chest level she said, “It doesn’t work, I need you to fix it.”

I took the DVD player and started to look at it. After about five minutes, I realized it was time to replace. the drive motor for spinning the DVD’s was burned out. What caused the DVD motor to burn out was the thin medal case pressed down on the drive assembly not letting it to spin.

The microwave ovens has been around for only a very short time. At first they were big heavy and expensive. At one time if you had a microwave oven, you were living on the cutting edge of technology. Today, you are behind the times if you do not have a one.

Most people I talk to or observe have only three basic requirements when it comes to a microwave oven. One, that it fits in certain place in the kitchen. Two, there cooking dish fits inside. Three, that it works.

It has been quite a few years since I had to buy a lawn mower. After reading an article in Consumers Digest, I started thinking about my old Briggs and Straton 1.5 hp mower.

I can not remember when I had purchased it. It has been through 2 19″ blades and 3 spark plugs. I even replaced the gas tank, when it developed a leak. It has been faithful old machine. So it is time to start thinking about replacing it.

What I got from the Consumers Digest article was that the price of lawn mowers are going to be going up in the next couple years. The laws around increase emission standards for any gas powered engine will be getting tougher. This is mostly because of going away from the old carburetor to a fuel injection system. There is even talk of propane power lawn mowers.  

The leading reason for people spending more money than they should on food is lack of energy. The family cook comes home in a tired from a long day at work. It is easier to make a quick run to Burger King or KFC, just because no one wants to cook dinner.

There are a few ways to save money and still get a quick and easy meal. The first is using what has come to be know as the cock pot aka the slow cooker. Yes it does take a little fore thought, but you can definitely save $2 to $5 or maybe even more person, as opposed to having Chinese food delivered.

The available recipes a limitless. About.com has a list of Southern Cockpot recipes that will get the family excited about dinner. Then there is Family Crock Pot Recipes and Crock Pot.com for hundreds of other quick and easy idea.