Freebies and free stuff

Sometimes I’m lucky enough to get a headsup whenever HIF is going to be featured on a news broadcast, which is exactly why I’m writing this since HIF was featured on WTMJ in Milwaukee last night. With new viewers comes waves of people being introduced to the land of freebies (ed: sounds like a bad board game) and so I put together this quick “what the heck is going on here?” guide.

First off, freebies can be found below. Just start scrolling and you’ll see our latest posts. If you prefer, you can select a Category over on the sidebar and display only freebies pertaining to that subject.

In addition to the freebies, here are some of the most popular sections of the site:

Frequently Asked Questions – This short page might help answer some of your questions about freebies and how they work exactly.

Free Coupons – A roundup of all the websites where you can print out coupons for free.

Daily Newsletter – Every day at 3:00 EST, a newsletter goes out with every new post we made in the previous 24 hours.

Forums – Our community forums are a great place to hang out and learn about freebies from other people who are into free stuff.

Top Rated Freebies – Occasionally we put together massive lists of freebies that you can find. For instance, we have an ongoing list of stores and restaurants that give away free birthday food. Another good example is our wiki page of every museum in the country that offers free admission!

Stay In Touch – And last, but not least, we offer a gazillion different ways to follow our recent postings. Want to follow our RSS feed? Addicted to Twitter? Ignore basic hygiene by spending too much time to Facebook? We feel your pain.

• Our RSS Feed
• Follow us on Twitter
• Chat with us on Facebook
• Does anybody still use Myspace?

And that should do it! Of course, if you still have no idea what’s going on here, feel free to contact me and ask away with your questions.

The good folks over at Teenormous t-shirts have offered to give any t-shirt found on their site worth up to $25 to a lucky reader here on HIF. In order to enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post and tell me about your favorite freebie you’ve gotten thanks to HIF. Was it an in-store offer? One you signed up for? A coupon? It doesn’t matter, just let me know which it was and how much you enjoyed it! Entries close at 12:01am on August 1st and the winner will be announced that morning.

In case you’ve never been to their site, Teenormous is essentially a search engine for t-shirts and with over 70,000 t-shirts in their database, it’s pretty safe to assume anybody would be able to find a t-shirt they liked there!

Also, I’ve put together a HIF Contest Winners page and linked to it down on the sidebar.

If you have a young child in your family, they might enjoy this free Lorax energy saving activity book from Energy Star. It’s only six pages, but it’s free and will help them learn about saving energy, such as turning out the lights when they leave a room. Just make sure you don’t accidentally order them the wrong freebie. Chances are they won’t find “Putting Energy into Profits: ENERGY STAR Guide for Small Business (2007 version)” nearly as interesting.

[via the forums]

So it appears today is going to be a coupon day, as the freebies seem to be dried up right now. Well no worries as long as I keep discovering sites like this free Arm & Hammer coupons page. All in all, they have 11 printable coupons for the taking:

$1.00 off Arm & Hammer Cat Litter Deodorizer Spray
$1.00 off Arm & Hammer Whitening Booster
$3.00 off new Arm & Hammer Clear Balance Pool Maintenance Tablets
$1.00 off any Arm & Hammer Total 2-in-1 Dryer Cloths
$1.00 off any Arm & Hammer Clumping Cat Litter
75¢ off any Arm & Hammer Clean Shower Daily Shower Cleaner
50¢ off any Arm & Hammer Carpet & Fabric Odor Eliminator Powder
$1.00 off any Arm & Hammer Essentials Cleaners Starter Kit
75¢ off any Arm & Hammer Scrub Free Bathroom Cleaner
$1.00 off any Arm & Hammer Toothpaste (4oz. or larger)
50¢ off two 2lb or 4lb Arm & Hammer Baking Soda OR Fridge Fresh Refrigerator Air Filter

Between these and the Lysol coupons, my apartment is going to be cleaner than it’s ever been before. Well, just as soon as I find somebody to clean it for me.

If you happen to have a kiosk nearby, you can get a free Blockbuster Express movie rental by using the code CKVPX9A7, which is valid through July 27. If you miss out on that, you can use code CKVPX9B7 between July 27 and August 10 for a “rent one DVD, get one free” deal.

Good luck finding a kiosk, though. From my quick glance, I think most of them are in Florida with a few in other large cities (San Jose, Houston, OKC, Dayton, etc). I’m just hope Blockbuster’s foray into movie kiosks will get Redbox to bring back their weekly free DVD rental codes. This once-a-month deal just isn’t cutting it for me!

I recently found out that there are over $11 in Lysol coupons on Lysol’s own site. The link is on the lower, left side and the coupons include:

$1 off Lysol Healthy Touch Gentle Hand Sanitizer Foam
$1 off Lysol NEUTRA AIR Sanitizing Spray
$4 off Lysol NEUTRA AIR Freshmatic Air Treatment Product
$1 off Lysol Disinfecting Wipes
50¢ off Lysol All Purpose Cleaner Trigger
50¢ off Lysol All Purpose Cleaner Pourable
50¢ off Lysol Disinfectant Spray To Go
$1 off Lysol Disinfectant Spray
50¢ off Lysol Disinfectant Spray
55¢ off Lysol Bathroom Cleaner
55¢ off Lysol Antibacterial Kitchen Cleaner

Note that the name you sign up with will be printed on the coupons, so you might not want to use a 100% bogus and stupid name like I did! I’m not sure if my local Walmart will take coupons that say “for Mr. Goob Shaloob” or not, but there’s only one way to find out.

Don’t forget that today’s yet another free McDonald’s Mocha Monday which means you can stop in and get a free mocha between now and 7pm. We wrote about this the other week and there are now 23 comments on that post, so feel free to read them to get an idea of what this freebie is about.

I wouldn’t recommend going to McDonald’s website though. It contains some…oddities. I loaded the page in a new tab and by the time I got back to it, there was a girl tap dancing with sparklers while in the middle of a group of people sitting and staring at her. I didn’t stick around to find out what was going on, but instead slowly backed away from my computer and looked around with shifty eyes to make sure nobody was watching me.

I think there’s pomegranate in everything nowadays. I don’t know what new product isn’t putting it in it, and this free Total Blueberry Pomegranate cereal is no exception to that rule. Next thing you know, we’ll have pomegranate milk. Lovely.

EDIT: This freebie is dead.

The more freebies that I see, the more they all look the same to me. Why, take this free sample of Gain with Febreeze. I could have sworn I’ve seen it before. I could have sworn that I’ve seen a spanish version of it too. But maybe its just because that’s all I see wherever I go: free. I swear, I must count mailpersons with free laundry detergent samples on nights I have a hard time sleeping…

This free Airborne page features a scantily clad male model while asking “who’s Sebastian?” Um, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say he’s the guy in the ad. Just a hunch. I admit, I could totally be wrong. But something in my gut tells me it’s the guy prancing around on the screen.