Frugal Friday
May. 31st, 2024 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
Welcome back to Frugal Friday! This is a weekly forum post to encourage people to share tips on saving money, especially but not only by doing stuff yourself. A new post will be going up every Friday, and will remain active until the next one goes up. Contributions will be moderated, of course, and I have some simple rules to offer, which have changed as we've proceeded. (As things have settled down to a nice steady conversational pace, for example, I've deleted the rules about only one tip per person per week and about limiting the length of comments; I was worried early on about people flooding the forum with too much too fast, but I think we're past that risk.)Rule #1: this is a place for polite, friendly conversations about how to save money in difficult times. It's not a place to post news, views, rants, or emotional outbursts about the reasons why the times are difficult and saving money is necessary. Nor is it a place to use a money saving tip to smuggle in news, views, etc. I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.
Rule #2: this is not a place for you to sell goods or services, period. Here again, I have a delete button and I'm not afraid to use it.
Rule #3: please give your tip a heading that explains briefly what it's about. Homemade Chicken Soup, Garden Containers, Cheap Attic Insulation, and Vinegar Cleans Windows are good examples of headings. That way people can find the things that are relevant for them. If you don't put a heading on your tip it will be deleted.
Rule #4: don't post anything that would amount to advocating criminal activity. Any such suggestions will not be put through.
With that said, have at it!
Re: I recommend music and fun audio recordings with maybe a few teachings here and there
Date: 2024-06-06 04:58 pm (UTC)One huge bonus is that my children are completely, totally enchanted with outdated technology, which is available for pennies on the dollar at thrift stores these days. We are the proud owners of a tape recorder, a CD player, two Smith-Corona electric typewriters (you can still get ribbons and cartridges for them fairly cheap), and lately, a record player (this was a score-- I'd been looking for a working LP player for ages! Found a suitcase model, working perfectly, for $20).
The not-quite-expected side-effect of all this is, the kids look for opportunities to type stuff-- menus, stories, letters, Christmas lists, whatever-- and most of the music they listen to is old. And they LOVE old records because they're 50 cents a pop, and it's a mysterious and wonderful *machine* that they can *operate* which is qualitatively different from just finding it on YouTube or queuing up the file on your computer. The disc goes round and round. I walked by their room a few days ago, hearing some Bach organ fugue, peeked in, and all three of them were huddled around the record player listening.
There are a surprising amount of actually-neat kids' LP records still floating around from back in the day-- Sesame Street made some good things back in the 70s and 80s, and if you have the player, you'll find there's an endless supply of classical recordings available for next to nothing. And... my kids would not listen to it if I played it on YouTube. Not interested. But if they have the record... that's different! They have completely memorized the Nutcracker Suite and I often catch the 4yo whistling bits of it while he plays with his trucks. It's hilarious. Old tech also makes it much, much easier to stem the flow of objectionable content into the house. It's not like there wasn't anything crass available on LP, it's just that most of it is collector stuff now, and you won't find it at your local St. V de P.
It's not foolproof. They got a big band album, and preschooler became totally obsessed with a super-annoying tune called "Be My Honeybee"-- which is super cute when he sings it, but the voice on the record is ear-piercingly shrill. Oof. But you know, it's not like whatever the construction workers are playing across the street all day, extolling the virtues of women who are "stacked in the back" and "loaded in the front"...