Day Ninety-Six - Skip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

Resurfacing Damaged DVDs Instead of Replacing Them

News flash: I'm a horrible mom who forces her children to watch Disney and Pixar films until their little eyes are bloodshot and bleary, and daylight makes them recoil in horror. OK, maybe I'm not THAT bad, but I definitely let me kids view their fair share of toddler-appropriate cartoons. In fact, the little ones boast an emarassingly large collection of DVDs.

The kids are allowed to pick out their own movies for "rest time" each day and this means the DVDs are generally mishandled and abused. From being scraped across the floor to having cinnamon-toast-dust ground into their data grooves, you name it, they've endured it. The result? A bunch of DVDs that skip like Shirley Temple on the Good Ship Lollipop.

The old me would have simply tossed the scratched disks into the trash and bought shiny, plastic-enshrined replacements. The new eco-me can't do that. Not only because I would be creating waste, but I'd also be violating my compact. Again.

I have tried "polishing" the DVDs with everything from mineral oil to peanut butter, but these disks are way beyond that point. They need professional help.

Clickety-click-click on the web -- and I find Skippy Disc who promises to make my old, worn out DVDs play like new again -- for much less than it would cost to buy new ($3.95 per DVD). Why would I ever throw another disc away!?

I'm gathering all the kids' skiptastic DVDs and will be mailing them off this week to Skippy Disc in Arizona (I did try to find someone local, but was unsuccessful in my search). I'll let you know how it works out.


Savings:

I will be saving roughly 5 DVDs on this mailing, and can assume I'll be resurfacing about five per year. Not a huge quantity for me personally, but imagine all the other moms with Disney flicks who toss and replace each year. What if we ALL resurfaced our damaged movies and music?


Difficulty Level: 2 out of 5

Ugh, I have to find one of those cardboard DVD mailer thingys. Hopefully they'll have some right at Krogers and I can just get them when I go grocery shopping Sunday morning. Otherwise, I'll have to stop by Office Max one day next week.