Mildly Embarrassing Monday: School Supplies

When Ironflower entered kindergarten, I discovered something that had eluded me as a teacher: buying supplies is a huge pain in the ass. When I was a teacher, I often bought extra supplies - many of my students came without. But I bought the supplies early, usually before anyone else was really thinking about school supplies. And since I usually just asked for whatever I found at my local Target, it didn't occur to me that my students' parents might have a hard time finding what was at my (on the other side of the city) Target in early July.

Also, I didn't know what the stores were like the weekend before school started.

But I quickly found out, that first kindergarten year. Every store was packed with obnoxious people. The teachers were VERY specific about brands and types of supplies. Instead of this being fun (I love office supplies in a way that might be a little disturbing), it was awful. We got everything on the list for the lowest prices; but I felt like we'd been through a war zone.

The following year, when Lovebug was entering kindergarten. I discovered that the PTA had a deal with School Toolbox*, where you paid a fee and they assembled the supplies for you, then shipped them to the school. I may have left lipstick kisses on the check, I was so grateful that I wouldn't have to go through the store thing again. 

The next year, for reasons I can't remember, we had a different company. Which shipped the supplies to our homes. Which also was late with many of them, necessitating a trip to get folders anyway. There were so many (justified) complaints that I think the program is over. 

And now we come to this year, with Ironflower entering third grade and needing things likeyellow lined post it notes. But I'm not doing the store thing again. In fact, by the end of the week, I'll have all of my kids' supplies. . .even the 3x3 yellow lined post it notes. I don't know if I got the very best prices, but since I'll have everything approximately 6 weeks before school starts, I don't really care. 

It started when the local grocery stores started putting out school supplies. Every school around here starts after Labor Day, but you wouldn't know it from our local stores. Anyway, I was looking at the supplies to find crayons and extra notebooks for their summer notebooks when I realized that the Crayola crayons (did I mention the teachers here are very brand specific?) were on sale. I knew crayons were on the supply lists, so I bought them. Then I noticed that the appropriate folders (plastic with pockets) were also there, so I bought those too. Two supplies down and I hadn't had to make an extra trip. 

That's pretty much one of my personal philosophies; avoid extra trips. Especially when they involve duking it out with more ferocious moms in the aisles at Office Depot. But then I remembered that I spend all day on the interwebz. And that Office Depot, like Staples, Target, KMart, Walmart and Amazon, has a website. Problem solved. Especially with a lot of them offering free shipping right now.

The mildly embarrassing Monday part of this is that it took 4 years for me to figure this out. Oh, and I am really excited to get our school supplies box. Like, looking forward to organizing it all and stuff. 

*This might not be the name of the company, but it was something like that.