As sad as it seems, at our house, we are already looking at the purchase of school supplies. With three children starting school this Thursday, yes, I said this Thursday, we have to go get them today. Thank you, year-round school. So I sat down with the three school supply lists and decided to figure out how to save money on the supplies we need.
First, I checked out the deals forum, because everyone there really does stay on top of the latest sales. The other good thing that I figured out, is that most of the school supplies around here are relatively inexpensive right now. Why? Because most people don’t go back to school until next month. For whatever reason, the stores around here have got some amazing deals right now. We saw a 12 pack of colored pencils over the weekend for $.12!
The next thing I did was find every single leftover school supply in the house. We located all backpacks, and decided which ones could see another school year. Eastman, however expensive it is at the beginning, has been going strong in our house for six years. The backpack needs to be laundered but it is still in great shape.
What we found:
- 186 pencils that just needed to be sharpened (yes, you saw that right)
- 4 pink erasers of varying sizes that although have pencils marks on them, work just as well as they had in previous years.
- 3 clipboards (why does a child need a clipboard at school – I never did) that needed to be cleaned, but a little nail polish remover made them look sparkling new.
- 7 1” binders, that again had names on them and markings, but some nail polish remover cleaned them right up.
- 27 spiral notebooks with only a few if any pages that were used. (why do teachers put spiral notebooks on the list and then at the end of the year they seem to come home hardly being used?)
- 134 colored pencils of various colors and brands. It wasn’t difficult to pull together a set for all three kids with extras. It was wonderful. So they didn’t come in a box, tough.
- 72 markers, with more than half of them being washable (the requested item on two lists). Easily separating them into two sets was fast and easy.
- 9 pairs of scissors (thankfully our kids are great about bringing their stuff home at the end of the year, they can be re-used this year)
There are dozens of other items we have found that will work for school supplies, and we even made our own pencil boxes. So before you go out and spend loads of money on school supplies, take a look at what you have in your own house. You might be surprised what you can dig up. I know that new school supplies are always exciting, but there are some things that you don’t have to repurchase. I am blessed because my children are content in re-using their old supplies again. I taught them well.