What's the best thing you ever bought for less than $20 ?

What's the best thing you ever bought for less than $20 ?

Everytime I snuggle into bed with my microwave seed filled warmer, I would not take a million for it. That's mine, what's yours ? :-)

The suet feeder for the wild birds. I have flickers and woodpeckers out there, sometimes with blue jays horning in. Little birds also like it when the bigger ones clear out. A couple weeks ago a small hawk swooped in! Hours of viewing fun for me and the cats.

A blending fork. So much easier to use than a pastry cutter (blender)

A gram of black Afghani hash for $5.
But that was a looooong time ago!

>4 Crypto-Willobie: Yeah, a dime bag isn't what it used to be, is it?

Marriage license with MrsHouseLibrary back in 2001.

My first electric screwdriver.

It turned cold on a walk through a North Devon town one May day. Frozen, on a whim, I dived into a charity shop and grabbed the first warm hooded coat I found without hardly looking, paid with loose change from my pocket and minutes later, wearing it, rejoined laughing friends in the street.
It washed and wore for years, always coming up like new. I now wear it every morning as a dressing-gown. Must be more than 20 years .. .. .. ..

>6 WholeHouseLibrary: Lovely !

>7 John5918: Oh ! I second that. What a giant leap forward.

E.T.A.
Most people don't realise that the screws had to be re-designed too with parallel threads.

Well, as we're the over-60 crowd, I am remembering all kinds of things that used to be available for under $20. A great pair of blue jeans. Hiking boots on sale. Film for my Pentax.

These days, the latest thing was two bucks I spent on an impulse buy for my cats - a very soft, plump, rattling mouse toy with a long string tail. It had been raining here for 3 days straight, and they were driving me nuts with their boredom. They each had a ball with this silly toy - tossing it, pouncing on it for long periods of time. It was a small thing that turned out to be priceless in its ability to entertain.

A long, flat, flexible, plastic rod with little hook things for cleaning out the sink drains. I think it cost a dollar from one of those junk catalogs. Better than liquid plumber!

I moved to a nice new house. Went to shops and selected a new kettle, “all singing, all dancing, lights up model” and a new “thinks for it’s self toaster”. Both very expensive.

My card is refused at the till. (Due to change of address!)

Swearing, go to Asda (Walmart?) supermarket, buy basic kettle and toaster for £5 each, pay cash, hope they will last until my bank sort themselves out.

That was 1998. They’ve been used most days since and still as good as new. Probably my best ever buy.

Lifelong membership of LibraryThing was offered at about that price back in the day. I think it was the best investment I ever made.

Tim made lots of promises including “No Advertising” and he has kept them all.

Well done Tim !

>13 Novak: I’ve been chewing on the question, because I have many nice purchases in that price range. I think you’ve hit on the best one though. LT has added so much value to my life.

Years ago, I did pay only $10 for a set of oak stacking file drawers. I built nice tops for them and they’ve functioned as end tables in my living room all this time. That’d come in second probably.

>1 TeaBag88: heated! I sleep on a neck pillow filled with wheatberries. But heat.....on my!

About 8 years ago I posted this on another LT thread but I still think the purchase is the best under $20 (actually under $3) purchase I ever made.

As a result of unpleasant world events I was drafted some years back and spent my two years plus aboard a U.S. tin can. Because of my duties on board I had a small phone booth type office. I had rearranged the filing cabinet contents so that I had one drawer to myself and I packed it with books. I did a lot of reading while in the service and my penchant for reading and my stash of books were known to everyone aboard ship.

One evening I was sitting in my office reading when there was a knock on the door. It turned out to be one of my shipmates (I've forgotten his name) and he wanted to know if he could borrow one of my books. I knew his taste in books ran to s**tkickers and f**k books (as they were called back then)and I told him I didn't happen to have anything in either vein. He said he had actually grown tired of those and was looking for something different. I thought a moment and then I gave him a paperback copy of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. About two days later he came back with the book and a friend. He had made such a fuss about the book that his friend was eager to read it and wanted to know if he could borrow it. I said sure, no problem, just be sure to take care of it and bring it back. He agreed and about two days later he came back with yet another friend in tow and we went through the same drill. This was repeated about 5 more times and then around the 6th time the person came back without the book but told me to whom he had lent it and later in the day that person came by and told me he had it, was taking good care of it, and, by the way, so far it was a great read. The book continued to be lent in this fashion for another 8 or 9 go 'rounds and then it just disappeared into the lending circuit of our ship. The last time I saw the book was about a year later. It was in the hip pocket of a snipe disappearing down Bravo 4. It was dirty, greasy, taped, dog eared, and intact...and it was obviously being read.

I have no idea how many people read that copy of Cannery Row but from the standpoint of entertainment, education, and light reading value received I think the two dollars+ I spent for that book was probably the best two dollar+ investment I ever made.

>16 alco261: I wish I could do more than just favorite your post. Bravo!!

>16 alco261: Wonderful story! My husband was in the USN, quartermaster/navigator on a small destroyer. He occasionally had post office duty and used the time to read books. Apparently there is nothing like reading Catch-22 in the midst of military service.

>16 alco261: Another tin can sailor! My husband also served on one of those. He has told me many stories about the books that were lent and circulated amongst the sailors. What ship were you on? Do you belong to Tin Can Sailors/DesVets organization?

>19 LadyoftheLodge: No, I'm not a member of any of the organizations. If your husband hasn't read The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors I'd recommend it to him. The other book about the same battle is For Crew and Country which is about one of the destroyers in the fight off Samar. It too is a very good read. The other history of destroyer action that I really like is in Ambrose's book D-Day it's the chapter titled "I am a Destroyer Man."

>18 nohrt4me2: actually, another good read while your in the Navy is Moby Dick. I had the good fortune of not being assigned that book while in high school. If you substituted hunting submarines for hunting whales there really wasn't that much difference between my time on board and Ishmael - every character in Moby Dick had his counterpart on my can.

I donate all my paperback books to Operation Paperback. Some have to to rehab centers in the US, but some have gone to the Philippines, Samoa, and a ship between SF and Hawaii.

Led Zeppelin tickets.

>16 alco261: Thank you for your service to America and thank you for your generosity with your books.

A bad storm deposited a load of junk on my patio. With it came someone's plastic dustbin lid, now full of rainwater.
Within a short time the birds using my feeders were bathing in it. I quickly rigged it up as a permanent 'cos we had never thought of a birdbath. They loved it.
As I type I am watching a glossy blackbird with a bright orange beak testing how far he can splash water across the patio. Total cost: Zero. Value: Priceless.

>20 alco261: He has read The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and also reads a lot of other military and navy books. FYI--My daddy was part of the amphibious Navy during WWII. He rarely talked about his experiences--all he told us was that he served as a machinist mate on a "supply ship." I researched his info a few years ago and found out what he really did. When we visited the WWII museum in New Orleans last year, I was amazed to see the model of the Higgins boat similar to what he served on, and how small it was.

>25 LadyoftheLodge: I appreciate your husband's service. And >16 alco261: also your service. I loved the WWII museum in NOLA. We could have spent all day there but ran out of time. If I ever get the chance to go back, I will budget the whole day (or two)!

>16 alco261: What a great story! Thank you for sharing it again with us here. Being read is what a book is made for.

>17 2wonderY: What is meant by "favoriting" a post? I see where one clicks to do this, but where does it end up? On our homepage here? Sorry for my ignorance!

>27 terriks: It doesn’t do much. No one knows you’ve done so except you, unless you mention it. It’s more functionally a highlighter, so it’s easier to spot if you review the thread.

>28 2wonderY: Ah, thank you!

I seem to cling to some kind of fear of button pushing, when feeling uncertain. But I swear I never blew anything up as a kid. 😉

>26 perennialreader: We loved the museum too, and spent just a half day there. We would make more time to visit it on a repeat visit, as we just skimmed the surface.

>29 terriks: I never blew anything up as a kid

Neither did I, but I have to confess to causing an explosion when I first started teaching chemistry. Well, the text book says use a small piece of sodium the size of a pea - how big is a pea? Mine was obviously too big, as when I put it in a bowl of water there was an explosion with steam and bits of molten sodium flying in all directions. It cleared the classroom, with forty girls rushing out of the door screaming - I was teaching in a rural girls' school in Uganda at the time. The corollary was that the school workers - cooks, cleaners, janitors, etc - were so impressed that they asked me to do it again for them, so I did. They all crouched down behind the benches at the rear of the science lab while I staged an equally impressive explosion just for them.

>31 John5918: "The corollary was that the school workers - cooks, cleaners, janitors, etc - were so impressed that they asked me to do it again for them, so I did."

Oh, yeah, that would have been me! My son and half dozen of his little friends were driving me nuts one day, so I gave them $10 and told them to go to be gas station and buy as many bottles of diet Coke and Menthos as they could get with that and I'd teach them about chemical reactions. Then we blew things sky high.

That was certainly one of my better under-$20 investments.

They also used up all my vinegar and baking soda in the kiddie pool.

>32 nohrt4me2: One of the gags the younger generation performs employs a similar chemical reaction. They uncap a liter of Diet Coke. They tie a Mentos with a string and nestle it into the cap. They carefully replace the cap and use a razor to remove any visible string.

>33 smirks4u: That sounds pretty fun! I learned from the baking soda and vinegar deal that other moms did not appreciate the addition of food coloring.

Letting them learn to cast a fly rod with weights (no hooks) on the end could also kill a couple hours.

My brother gave me some M80s one time, and blowing up milk jugs is fun, but I drew the line at anything that required ignition or a heat source.

Supposedly the baking soda and vinegar is useful for clearing clogged drains. One had to be extremely careful, because basic (versus acidic) solutions can damage your eyes forever, amen.
I don't know a fly rod from a Winnebago, but in my childhood we had little Zebco rods. Children would cast fishing weights at inflated pool floats twenty feet away.

After most of the library books had been purchased at their sale, the remnants were offered by the pound. I got a banana box full for about $20. By that time I had learned to buy reference texts and borrow most novels.