Hair Clippers - Maybe My Quickest Payback Ever

Wrangling two squirmy, impatient little boys into the children's hair salon (salon might be overstating it) once every few months isn't what I would call fun.  The wait is sometimes quite long, the toys in the waiting room are grimy and inevitably there is some kid with a hacking cough showering my kids with the virus du jour.

So about a year ago, I bought electric clippers and started giving my kids haircuts in the kitchen.  $30 for the clippers with all of the accessories, including a short instruction manual and a cape.  I just turn the TV on for distraction, plop them in a chair and trim away.  After one or two haircuts they got used to the sound and vibration of the clippers.  Cleanup is easy - just keep the vacuum handy.

My husband complains that I cut my kids' hair too short (I like it tidy), so I'm working on improving my repertoire to include something more fashionable.  YouTube has a lot of how-to videos for cutting hair at home.  I also recently took the kids back to the salon for haircuts and got a tutorial from an unsuspecting hair stylist. 

A lot of green ideas are beneficial on many levels - they might have less impact on the environment, use fewer resources, be less toxic, might save money.  And many of them are less convenient and take a bit of time.  Hair clippers are MORE convenient, take LESS time, don't require gas to get us to the hair salon and cost us less.

I can't think of many things I've bought that have delivered 100% payback within a day.  $30 for clippers versus $26 (plus tip) for two kids' haircuts at the salon means that the clippers just about paid for themselves after cutting both of my kids' hair myself just one time.  Not bad.

Oh, and one other tool I've found useful for dealing with very thick hair: thinning shears.