Surviving Back To School shopping

Across the country kids are heading back to school in the next few weeks and parents are clamoring to get ready. Getting ready usually means a trip to your favorite big box store to buy supplies, use this handy guide to make it stress free. 

Come prepared - Your children's school may have provided you with a list of supplies specifically for their upcoming grade. If not most stores have generic ones available or you can find one online. 

Divide and conquer- if you are like me and have multiple children, separate their supplies while in store. I use two shopping carts and large reusable bags. I put all of the kids things in their own bags at the store and on the first day of school they have their giant bag of supplies to bring in. 

Buy now and save - Never during the year are crayons, pencils, folders or glue sticks as inexpensive. Usually I will double up on some supplies so in January when we are out of sharp crayons, I can grab some from the closet instead of buying more. 

Help out the class - When we can we buy extra of the class specific items (paper towels, wipes, glue sticks) because if we don't the teacher will have to buy those things for their classroom. 

Be flexible  - I try to do the bulk of my shopping at one store. If I were doing my shopping at an office store I'm buying the wipes, tissues and other non-school specific items at a big box store or supermarket. So if you can't find some special item, or something seems way over priced. Then check out other stores, but all of your staples are going to be basically the same price everywhere.