School supply shopping: DONE!

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat Weekend on Aug. 5, 2011

I don’t want to shock you, but we are finished with the infamous, annual August ritual: school supply shopping. I know, I know. Had I waited until this weekend, it would all have been tax-free, but there is downsizing and desperation in the bureaucratic atmosphere. Should I deprive our government of a few tax dollars? I’m not ruffled by giving them ten dollars. At least I’m done shopping.


If I had needed to pinch pennies, I would have waited. But I can justify my extravagance. I am neither flying around the world nor running off on cruises nor buying expensive designer clothing. On the other hand, neither am I standing with a tin cup in hand along with the woeful dangling placard on my chest, so I feel it’s okay to have “indulged” in shopping earlier than usual. Waiting, for a procrastinator like me, can have its pitfalls.

I might have put off the trip indefinitely. Then, I would be dashing through the aisles at the same time as every other school year: The night before school starts. Going shopping the night before school is pretty much a bad idea. You are left to wander the aisles that look like they’ve been mobbed. They are strewn with spilled book covers. College-ruled papers are found in inappropriate relationships with the much younger wide-ruled set, tossed about in mislabeled boxes. This forces you to read each label as opposed to grabbing reams or composition books and tossing them, carefree, into the cart.

Shopping late leaves you to discover that those big, huge, bins of supplies aren’t actually filled from the ground up. They have a false cardboard bottom that is about thigh-high. You are going to be seeing way too many of these bare white cardboard bottoms than should legally be allowed. Last-second shopping leaves you squinting in the artificial night-shopper’s brightness well past the children’s bedtime. Invariably, there is some other procrastinator in the store who is carting around an unhappy and overtired toddler who cannot stop howling. This intensifies your painful experience. You want to howl too.

So this year, I have decided to forgo the pain that has tainted my perspective on shopping. I loathe shopping. I dread shopping. But shopping is a necessary evil, especially when you do not possess the skills and patience of a prairie settler.

I took the children shopping early because I had an idea of such sheer brilliance that I am now filled with fear and self-doubt. I turned over the lists as well as the chore of buying school supplies to each respective child. (Even the not-so-respective ones, for that matter.) I gave each child a cash allotment of thirty dollars. They were free to spend all of it or none of it, but their backpacks needed to be loaded with all the necessities. The thrifty could keep the surplus funds. The spendthrifts who require decorator binders would need to dig into their own savings.

The moment I called out this plan, the most miserly children (or the most ingenious, depending on your perspective), darted off. They checked the over-the-door, clear-pocket, shoe organizers where I had stuffed all those clearance, ten-cent book covers, as well as last year’s nickel-a-box crayons. They dashed down to the basement where I keep our overstock of school supplies for the school year. Then, they tackled the bins stacked with lined and graph paper as well as binders and portfolios. These rascals figured the quicker they pilfered our home for freebies, the smaller their cash outlay would be later on.


Watching my most eager children grab the last of the glue sticks, ferret out red pens, and strike gold with a pristine pencil pouch, I felt a mixture of shame (at hording supplies) and pride (at devising a plan that encourages them, instead of me, to do the hunting.)

Last year, I was reading a book on organizing and de-junking the home. Unfortunately, midway through the book, I misplaced it. I’m not trying to be funny; that’s the sad truth. In it, the author (whom I cannot acknowledge, since she has chosen to go AWOL amongst our other books) said we shouldn’t succumb to the myth of saving money by buying things on sale and then trying to make our homes into a place to store all these great finds. She said that’s why they have places called “stores.” Instead, we choose to live in junk-piles where we lack shelving and the full-time employees to keep them organized.


My children’s school shopping is DONE. We even finished shopping for the child we “adopted” through our church’s outreach. I’m glad my children have divested me of my hoard. Now all I need to do is find that book.