How My Supply Closet Adds Up to Big Back-to-School Savings

We finished up our back-to-school shopping today, with one visit to the store only. That’s because I was able to shop at home first without spending a dime.

You see for the past few years I’ve been stockpiling school supplies. Basically, I’ve been approaching this supply stash in two ways.

1. At the end of the previous school year, I search through all the supplies that my daughters have brought home and which I can recycle/reuse the next year.
2. When stores are offering penny deals, I’ll stock up on supplies that I know we’ll eventually need.

You’ve heard me give this advice before but it’s worth repeating: before we hit up Staples, I took my daughter’s supply list and had her use it as she went through all of the leftover supplies in our stash. Once she determined what we didn’t have, we headed out to the store.

Of the supply list that was 30-plus items long, we had to purchase 9 items only. They were:

• 4 packs of pens (blue, black and red–the black ones were this week’s penny deal)
• 2 packs of Scotch tape
• 1 pack of mechanical pencils
• 1 pencil-holding compass
• 1 Texas Instruments calculator

All told, we spend $20.78 out of pocket on back-to-school supplies. I say “out of pocket” because I had a $9.75 Staples Extra Rewards coupon that I was able to apply to my purchase.

Here’s a bonus to all of this: while searching for the school supplies we already owned, I came across more loose change, which added up to $39. Cha-ching!