Cut Costs at Home

Get your castoffs picked up for free by more than 60 nonprofit furniture banks nationwide. (Your items generally need to be in good condition.) Find one near you at nationalfurniturebank.com.

Boost your knowledge with free online college courses. (You may need to buy books or download special software.) Yale, MIT and Stanford are among dozens of universities offering no-cost knowledge. Visit education-portal.com and click on “OpenCourseWare” for a list of offerings by topic.

Sell your junk, but first get an idea of what it’s really worth by going to itaggit.com, an online “blue book” for pack rats and collectors. The site analyzes recent sales at online markets.

Free photo editing online is available at citrify.com, where your uploaded photos can be tweaked with nifty effects like teeth-whitening and wrinkle-removing. Pixorial.com provides free video online editing and up to 10 gigabytes of free storage.

Sell your books. At cash4books.net or sellbackyourbook.com, you type in an unwanted book’s ISBN number to get an offer. If you like what you see, fill out a prepaid mailing label, box the books and send them off. Payment comes by check or as a credit to your PayPal account.

Volunteer techies give free advice on common computer problems at fixya.com.

Don’t dump, recycle. Join the local bulletin board at freecycle.org and post what you want to give away or something you’re looking for. No money changes hands, and your unwanted stuff won’t add to a landfill. If there’s no group in your area, the website tells how to set one up.