August 31, 2018
School Shopping
Lots of people do school shopping in late July or August, just before school starts.
Since we do school year-round, I’m constantly replacing school supplies by stopping in at my favorite thrift shops and scooping up extra pencils, notebooks, erasers, or expo markers (the most commonly used items in our school).
I do try to take advantage of the school sales that pop up at the end of school supply shopping months.
Take notebooks: one independent writer in our home goes through an average of five single-subject notebooks a year! (That’s not a lot when you consider that each notebook usually has 70 pages.) Our history, science, and most upper math courses require a paragraph or page of written work. Grammar practice is to edit said paragraphs or pages and rewrite them correctly. So we use a lot of paper. I prefer to use notebooks because they keep all the papers together and they are easier to carry than loose leaf paper (we often do work in remote locations). This year I have four independent writers and one still using training paper (the ones from tablets with three-line-spaces). But my training-writer is writing times tables and measures this year. She will need one or two notebooks. I always add one extra for each student because I would rather have extra than to buy them at 4 to 10 times the sale price! (Most of us homeschool on a budget, don’t we?)
Oh, yes, another trick I learned was to buy college-ruled notebooks because you get extra lines at the bottom. (Silly, but it also makes you write smaller thus more work ends up on one page.)
We bought 22 notebooks this year! Staples & Officemax both claimed the “normal” price for a college-ruled store-brand notebook with 70 pages was $2.49. I know Walmart has them for $1.20 or so and the thrift shops have partially used ones for $0.50. They were on sale for $0.25, usually I can find them for $0.10, but this year if someone had them super cheap, I missed that sale. Shopping the sales essentially saved us $20.90 just on notebooks. (The receipts claimed we “Saved” way more, but I base my savings off the cheapest normal price, not the inflated office supply store price.)
Pencils, erasers, markers, rulers, and other assorted small things I usually buy from thrift stores because you can get a lot more used items less expensive than the sale price on new ones. Rebeccah does Sunday School and likes to buy cute craft stuff for it, which is also less expensive (and a much larger collection for choose from) at the thrift stores.
Backpacks are another thrift store buy. I generally choose to spend less than five dollars on a backpack. Someone’s hand-me-down from last year often has a lot of wear left in it. We use backpacks for school stuff, travel bags (you can only carry what you can fit in your backpack), and overnight bags for Grandma’s house trips. Even Lucas has a backpack (a cute smaller Cars one we found for a dollar at a thrift store). He’s funny, when we’re headed to drop off at college, I’ll say “grab your school stuff.” (Generally, a writing tablet or book) Lucas puts two books (usually two the bigger girls have been reading – lately a favorite has been Prince Caspian), his crayon box, and his tablet in his backpack and will say “I’m ready for my school!” His backpack swallows him!
We have learned to use the before-school sales to help keep our expenses low yet still get the items we like to use. (Filler paper is cheaper than using notebooks, but I’ve learned notebooks are neater and easier.) The older girls need computer paper for some college assignments and CAP work, so we also tend to buy computer paper during the sales times as they will have some super mail-in rebate offer or something.
The coolest part of shopping for school supplies is the practical math lessons that go along with it! (I can find lessons in everything!)
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~Nancy Tart