School’s out for summer–or it soon will be for most readers of this blog. If your house looks anything like mine, there are piles of school supplies, clothes and lunch boxes that got dumped on the last day of school.

Believe it or not, you can uncover a ton of ways to save money in a few months on back-to-school savings, just by going through those piles now. Here are 3 tricks for how the end of school can equal back-to-school savings down the road:

1. Find leftover school supplies that you can reuse next year. A great way to cut down on your back-to-school buying is to identify school supplies that you purchased the previous school year and which you can reuse the next year. Just today I found an unopened box of markers, three-ring binder and composition notebook that was on my 6th graders “must buy” list for going back to school but, it seems, the teacher never go around to using. You can bet that we’ll be reusing these items in September, should a box of markers, a three-ring binder or a composition notebook show up on the 7th grade school supply list.

2. Wash items to give them a new life. Your child’s gym clothes, lunch box and stretchy book covers may come home at the end of the year looking worse for the wear. But toss them in the washing machine and see how they turn out. I find that items that look destined for the giveaway pile often get a new life once they’ve been properly cleaned and dried. In fact, we have some book covers and lunch boxes that have been going strong now for three years, thanks to my habit of washing them at the end of the year.

3. Start consigning clothes. If your children have for sure grown out of their clothing this year, spend the next few weeks getting them ready to bring to a consignment shop. When I say “get them ready,” I mean give them a good washing, look them over for stains or tears, and make sure they’re in reasonably good shape so that a resale shop will be interested in taking them off your hands. If you can make a few bucks off of last year’s school clothes, that will be a few more bucks you’ll have in your wallet when it comes time to buy next year’s school clothes.

What are some other ways that you can find back-to-school savings at the end of the school year?