School supplies on a budget

Here in Australia, it’s time to do the ‘back to school’ shopping. It’s when the school sales are on, even though there’s still a while before our kids head back to school.

Miss 9 is entering into fourth grade this year, and I’m going to share a few tips I’ve learnt over the last couple of years to help you save some money with your school provisions.

Accept hand me downs for school uniforms
If you know any parents who have kids going to the same school as yours, be receptive to any offers of outgrown uniforms, especially dresses, jackets and shirts. I find these are the more costly items because at a lot of schools (and certainly the school my daughter has just left) require kids to have the school emblem on these things.

Work out which parts of the uniform can be bought elsewhere
This can vary from school to school, but generally, shorts, tracksuit pants, culottes, skirts and socks can be bought elsewhere at a bargain.

I tend to get the clothes that need emblems at full price (although I’ve been lucky to have some good friends who’ve handed some pieces down too), then buy the abovementioned stuff at Big W, Best and Less, Target, K-Mart and so on. I’ve found perfectly good tracksuit pants brand new in the past years between $4-$6!

Considering that tracksuit pants aren’t used all year round, I don’t want to spend $24 per pair (that’s how much they cost if I were to buy them from the school). My daughter did have one of these pairs, and I found they wore out in exactly the same way the cheap ones would. By the next year, they are always outgrown. Screw that! Buy ‘em cheap! For that price, I can buy about a pair for every day of the damn week, which equals one pair bought from the school.

Take advantage of the sales
It’s so obvious, but it needs to be said. If you notice that Coles is selling exercise books for one cent each, that is the time to stock up, my friends! Don’t be quick to rush in and pay $5 for a homework folder. Over the years, I’ve seen them go on sale for under a dollar. They are exactly the same in quality, and if you stock up on those, you won’t need to buy a $5 one in a panic just because it’s on the book list.

Have a place to store your stationery
The bottom drawer in the kitchen is where we store all our stationery. Over the years, because I’ve taken advantage of some really good sales at Coles and Officeworks, I’ve actually found in the last two years I didn’t need to buy many things for school at all, because we had a drawer chock-full of them.

This year I did buy some more things, because my fiance has been so excited about our new house that he packed away that drawer. But that’s ok, I was keen to build some excitement in Miss 9 about her new school anyway, with some cute little goodies I wouldn’t normally splurge on. Because we’re so well decked out from previous years and I know we have boring things like pencils on hand, I can afford to buy some novelty erasers with a clear conscience.

It’s also great to have a place to keep your stationery, because then it means when Miss 9 ‘accidently’ leaves her pencil case at school and tells me with a straight face that this is why she can’t do her homework today, I can fling that drawer wide open and say, ‘Ha-ha! CAN!’

Since doing this, her pencil case comes home more often. Also, because we do a lot of art and craft activities with all three kids, having a steady supply means we can just get down to it.

If you are given a booklist from the school
I haven’t sent my kids to a school that does this, but I have heard of schools that have a list of goods you ‘need’ to buy from them. It goes a little something like this:
Blank computer disc – $10
Flash drive – $20

You can add whatever other outrageously priced items to that list that you want. Don’t just blindly hand your money over! Ten dollars for for ONE computer disc?? What is it, gold-plated? Yeah, right! Try $8 for 15 blank discs at the local computer store, or thirty cents per disc, even.

We found a flash drive for our daughter for about $12 at Office Works (not during a sale) for school. It’s YOUR money, be discerning, and for God’s sake, if you ever get handed a stupid list like this, please check it and see if you can better those prices. That’s food in your childrens’ bellies or their savings for Tertiary education.

Have fun making items you need
My daughter lost her library bag one year, but instead of going out and buying another ten dollar bag with Littlest Pet Shop on the front, I realised I had loads of a beautiful embroidered, purple fabric sitting around. So I quickly ran up a library bag for her.

You can do the same with paint smocks (sew it or provide a man’s button-up shirt to be worn back to front. In Kindergarten, I even sent my daughter with an old peasant top of mine that I couldn’t fit my boobs into anymore, LOL! It worked great, and she got compliments, which shocked me – ‘this old thing?’), chair tidies, cushions for reading time, you name it.Kids love being able to brag that their mum made it.

And now, over to you. How do you save money when it’s time to send your kids back to school?