Q: LittleMissKnowitAll, we are looking to add a white noise machine to the baby's room for naptime and nights, but I hate the high price of most of the good ones. Do you have any advice on finding one for less than $60? A: Absolutely! Here's a little money-saving tip from the KnowitAll household: Use an mp3 player instead!
We all have white noise in our bedrooms but we don't use the expensive machines. They can run upwards of $60 and often have a frequent repeat on the sound, so that it can become monotonous instead of soothing. Our kids have had some form of white noise in their room since birth, so that we didn't always have to tiptoe around the house while they slept--an aquarium, a fan, a music player, etc. As the kids have gotten older we now use an mp3 player and hook it up to cheap speakers. My son has a recording of a thunderstorm; my daughter has one of birds singing in the rainforest; we have one of ocean waves. We set them on repeat and off to sleep we go!
A LOT cheaper than the machines if you get one of those cheap $20 mp3 players or already have one lying around. You can download new sounds for $1-$2 later if you want something else. iTunes and Amazon music have tons of these types of mp3s! We downloaded a few of them that are two hours long each--so we have a real variety available if we choose. Each one cost us around $1.99. We already had a bunch of older mp3 players lying around that no one was using, so they didn't cost us anything extra! We plugged them into old computer speakers (again, that were simply cluttering up closet space). Now we have our own custom sound machines.
If you have a smartphone that plays music, you can actually set the phone to play one of these soundtracks as you fall asleep, and then to play one that sounds more like morning (say, birds singing, wind chimes or harps) every morning for your morning "alarm." It is a much nicer way to wake up in the morning!