Back to school shopping always seems to be a budget buster. New clothes, new shoes, new supplies. Why is it that children must have new pencils, new crayons, new backpacks, new clothes, new everything every year? They don’t! I can’t tell you how many boxes of pencils, crayons, and markers we have lying around. And notebooks! We have a stack of half-used and unused notebooks. A whole three-ring binder full of loose leaf paper. Backpacks up the wahoo. A collection of calculators. Rulers, rulers, and more rulers. And enough Elmer’s glue to feed an entire kindergarten class! All stuff we have been duped into buying again and again. What a waste!
Thankfully, this year we have jumped off the back-to-school-buy-new bandwagon. First we collected all leftover supplies from previous years and sorted out what could be used this year: four notebooks, a box of pencils, highlighters, and her backpack. Then we took inventory of what we still needed to get, including clothes. As it turns out all we really needed to buy was three more notebooks, an accordion file {she chose this over a 5 Star binder}, pens, socks, shoes, two pairs of pants, and a sports bra. Not a whole new wardrobe and not every item on the school supply list.
I have heard teachers complain about how much stuff – good stuff! – gets thrown away at the end of the year. The kids don’t even think about it or maybe don’t know any better {because we buy them new stuff every year!}, they just dump everything from their desk or locker into the trash bin. AHHH!!!! Thank goodness a few teachers have the foresight to collect unwanted materials from their students. They store these away for future years when a student either forgets to bring something to class or perhaps their family can’t afford new supplies. And, thank goodness my kid will not be contributing to this calamity.
- 1970′s dress {Vintage Vogue}
- Striped watch {thrifted}
