Question regarding inactive memory

[David van Hoose]

This may be a bit of a newbie'ish question, and maybe a bit off-topic, 
but is there any way for me to remove inactive memory, either explicitly 
or implicitly? I have 512MB of PC2700 SDRAM, but my system is constantly 
eating into the swap I have on my system since I have usually about 
140-300MB of inactive (and dirty) RAM and usually about only 250MB in 
active memory. Is there a way for me to correct this bad memory usage 
without having to reboot? If patching the kernel would be a possible 
route to venture to, I'm game.

Any suggestions or comments are welcome.

Thank you all!
David