Back to School (where did the summer go?)

It's that time of the year again. The one that Staples touts is, "the most wonderful time of the year," except to me, it's not. I miss my children ferociously when they leave. My oldest is in 6th grade this year (when did I get old enough to have a child in 6th grade?!), and I have two others in third grade and kindergarten respectively.

Now the preparations are starting to get them ready for school. Two of them, thankfully, I don't have to buy supplies for. The school asks for $35 for each child and they buy the supplies for you. I have compared this cost with a friend who purchased everything for her child last year. Her cost was well over $50 for each child. I guess this is a wonderful savings in my pocket.

My oldest child I have to buy supplies for. Tell me, do you buy yours all at once not caring the price? Probably not because you are here reading. When do you start purchasing? I started looking through the list that was given and between what came home from last year that was unused or minimally used, and things that I had purchased on sale throughout the year, there's not too much left that I need to buy.

Do you reuse your supplies from last year?

My son is mortified that I have a 48 "pack" of colour pencils for him that I have been able to combine from supplies that came home at the end of the year. They were barely used, so why oh why, would I go out and buy a pack of colour pencils when we all ready have tonnes of them waiting to fill their purpose? They will all be sharpened and in their own pencil case and no one will be the wiser.

One thing that we buy new every year, is jeans. This is for two reasons really. One, I can not find used boys' jeans anywhere that aren't ripped and stained and not meant to be and our children have worn through their's from last year and two, I can get them fairly inexpensive.

As I tweeted the other day (fightin2bfrugal), Old Navy has their children's jeans on for $10, regular $24.50.  Great deal and it's on until August 19th. As we went in, I remembered that I had been asked to fill out a survey the last time I purchased something there and would get 15% off my next visit. Oops, forgot to do the survey.

It's horrible when you know you could have saved more money had you only not procrastinated.

Then the wonderful thought came to me: buy only one thing and see if you get another survey! Well, sure enough we were invited to participate again.

Out we trudged to the car and did the survey, got the code and went in to take advantage of the 15% off.

Instead of those lovely jeans they were selling for $10, we were able to purchase them for $8.50 each! Fantastic savings! Three pairs for each school age child!  $76.50 on jeans instead of the $220.50 that it would have cost us had we purchased them at the regular price! Yeah, I know, I never would have bought them at the regular price.

The only thing left to buy are two pairs of sneakers, a thermos, a lunch kit and a few more actual supplies for my oldest. Not too bad!

Tell me, what do you do for back to school?  Are you ready to go?

I am preparing a post on school lunch ideas next. What do your children love, don't love and can't live without? Please share your lunch ideas with me and I will post with all that I find out.

Enjoy your day!