School Supplies

Every year, no matter what, I spend $150 on school supplies. I should qualify that. Every year since I moved to Texas. In California no one was asked to buy school supplies. But here the schools publish a big list and you are expected to bring it all in on Meet the Teacher night and put it in the class. California is a bankrupt state, and Texas isn't. So they are doing something right here. But it still kind of irks me that I have to search high and low for black Expo dry erase markers and bring reams of copy paper to school. If every child brings two boxes of 24 pencils, that should be enough, right?

One benefit of Will being a teacher is that he had a lot of 12X18 packs of manila paper left over from last year. So our kids are bringing the surplus and I didn't have to buy that.

Different stores run specials to get you in, so the last couple of years I've been trying to beat the system by hitting those sales and only buying the deals. Today I bought 5 packs of filler paper at Staples for 1 cent each. The rest were .78 each, but still...I got out of there with 20 items for $17.00. I felt a kind of vindictive glee because I paid less than a dollar for each item on average. I realize that I was resenting this required spending spree and beating the system gave me just a little sense of sticking it to the man. However we spent the rest of the budget at Target getting everything else, including a tacky Transformers backpack for Sam ($9.00) that he loves. The one from last year had holes in the bottom.

I'm glad to be done with this. Maybe next year I'll start earlier and hit all those weekly sales and maybe only spend $100, or even $80. I really feel that it should be possible. We'll see.