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!

I was in New York City today, filming this “Good Day New York: Street Talk” segment, on behalf of KIWI Shoe Care. This is the last in my series of back-to-school savings segments.

My dad and stepmother spent this past weekend moving my half sister into her freshman year of college in South Carolina. They are likely in good company, as hundreds of thousands of parents get ready to pack up and drop off their kids at college.

But are the doing that packing up in a green and frugal way? If not, then they might appreciate these 10 steps to a greener college move in, courtesy of Dedee DeLongpre Johnston, director of sustainability at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (along with some of my commentary on the topic, too). Her goal is to make this very wasteful time of year–what with cardboard boxes, Styrofoam packing materials, and heaps of unanticipated duplicates end up in huge piles of trash outside residence halls and apartments–end up with a little less (or a lot less) trash in the end.

1. When shopping for school supplies, look for paper, pens, and notebooks with post-consumer recycled content. Consider re-using a backpack from last year. Upperclassmen will be re-using their bags – you won’t be alone.
2. Investigate whether your new campus offers a car-sharing program, like Zipcar. You may be able to avoid the expense and hassle of having a car on campus. If your family is accompanying you to move-in, you can take one car. Or maybe your college will force you to “avoid” the expense all together–because it doesn’t allow freshmen to have cars on campus. (That’s a pretty green move, in and of itself.)
3. Find out what will be waiting for you when you arrive. Some campuses have offices of sustainability or sustainability-related student groups who will outfit you with re-usable shopping bags, recycling bins, and sometimes even re-usable water bottles.
4. Pack clothes, shoes, and sheets in re-usable plastic crates or even pillow cases. Not only does this create less waste, but also allows you to pack these additional items in a way that takes up less space in the car. And you haven’t had to spend any money on moving boxes.
5. Wrap picture frames and other breakables in T-shirts, or towels. Sandwich larger items like framed posters between pillows, blankets or comforters, and tie it all up with re-usable twine or an extension cord. If you do need to use bubble wrap, find out where the nearest UPS Store is so you can take the bubble wrap there for recycle. (According to EcoCycle these franchises will recycle bubble wrap.) If you have those “inflatable” plastic cushions that shippers use, you can deflate them and recycle them in the same bins where you would drop plastic bags at the supermarket.
6. Pack school supplies in re-usable file crates with handles. The crates will come in handy for organizing schoolwork throughout the semester.
7. Contact roommates before packing to avoid unnecessary duplicates. Find out in advance who is bringing room furnishings, such as area rugs, tool kits, televisions or toaster ovens so you can save money buying new or have fewer things to pack.
8. Put toiletries in sturdy-handled shower baskets and re-usable zip-top bags. If your dorm has a communal bathroom on each floor, you will need one of these shower baskets to tote your toiletries in anyway. You can even pack all of this in a laundry basket, which you know for sure you will need at some point during the semester (at least this mom hopes you will).
9. Recycle any boxes you do bring on move-in day, especially new product cartons and packaging, by taking them to a designated collection site. Most campuses recycle cardboard, and some collect Styrofoam packaging.
10. Remember to pack enough re-usable water bottles for everyone helping with the move. Move-in day is usually among the hottest of the year so you know you’re going to be thirsty.

If you’re moving a child into his or her college dorm this year, what steps did you take to reduce waste?

If you still have some back-to-school shopping to do–and you live in Connecticut, Florida or Illinois–don’t forget your tax-free shopping days. You’ll find the details below.

1. Connecticut: On Aug. 15-21, clothing and footwear costing less than $300 per item are exempt. Does not include accessories or athletic or protective clothing.
2. Florida: On Aug. 13-15, the following are exempt: books, clothing, wallets or bags (including handbags, backpacks, fanny packs and diaper bags) with a sales price of $50 or less per item; and school supplies with a sales price of $10 or less per item. Excludes briefcase, suitcases and other garment bags. Also does not apply to sales made within a theme park, entertainment complex, public lodging establishment or airport.
3. Illinois: On Aug. 6-15, footwear and clothing with a sales price of less than $100 per item and school supplies will be exempt.

Here is one of the segments from yesterday’s satellite media tour on frugal back-to-school shopping. This appeared on Fox 17 in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Today’s blog post comes courtesy of  Zac Bissonnette, a personal finance expert and a current senior at the University of Massachusetts who has written a brand-new book (out in September) called Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching off My Parents(Portfolio Trade/Penguin; $16.00). Here Zac offers his advice for three ways you can save on back to college.

1.) Buy Old Editions of Textbooks.

A few semesters ago I performed an experiment: instead of buying new books, I bought old editions of the textbooks for my classes to see whether they would work just as well.

They did and instead of spending $500 on books that semester, I spent $13 — including shipping! And they worked just as well as the new editions! Old editions of textbooks can usually be had on Amazon for between one cent and $3. So the savings work out to something like 95% off of retail. It’s a good idea to check with your professor to see if there’s any problem with doing this for your class; for some classes it won’t work.

2.) Unless You’re an Engineering Major, Buy an Old, Crappy Laptop.

I buy laptops used/refurbished by power sellers on eBay for under $200. They come fully loaded with software and, unless you’re playing massive multi-player online games or trying to use complicated software for an engineering or computer science class, they work just as well as the new ones you can buy from Dell. Plus, you don’t have to have a heart attack if you spill tea on it and fry the hard drive (Yes, I did that last year).

3.) Eat at the Dining Hall as Little as Possible: It’s Really Expensive.

At my school, using the campus meal plan ends up costing about $8 per meal on average, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. To put that in perspective, a family of four that ate all its meals that way would spend about $35,000 per year on breakfast, lunch, and dinner! So, unless you are required to live and eat on campus, this is a fantastic reason to live off-campus where you can cook at home with roommates.

Given that the National Retail Federation has reported that back-to-school spending will be relatively flat in 2008, I’m not surprised that some of the other popular posts on The Lean Green Family have had to do with back-to-school shopping. I mean, recession or not, you’ve got to get your kids supplies for when the class bells ring again, and we frugal parents would like to get the most bang for our back-t0-school buck without busting our budgets.

For this day of the Best Blog Week Ever, I’ve presented a compilation of popular back-to-school posts.

Back-to-School Savings & Bottle Issue Solved

A number of years ago, I wrote an article for Woman’s Day magazine on creative ways to save money on back-to-school shopping. While Staples wasn’t having any one cent sales that I know of at that time–and therefore I couldn’t offer that in my story–there were a number of pieces of advice in that article that still ring true for me today. One such piece of advice was that if I needed to get my kid a musical instrument, I would look for a used on on eBay or from a store like Music Go Round, instead of buying new.

Another piece of advice that I continue to use in my everyday life is this: it’s worth it to spend a little bit more money on an item that is well-made, will last a long time and/or comes with a lifetime guarantee. That’s because once you buy a product from a company like this, you’ll never have to pay for another one again–thus making your money, and your savings, go a long way.

Once such company that stands behind its products is L.L. Bean. (Jansport also offers a lifetime guarantee on its school-related products, like backpacks and bags.) Here’s how L.L. Bean promotes that guarantee on its website:

Our products are guaranteed to give 100% satisfaction in every way. Return anything purchased from us at any time if it proves otherwise. We do not want you to have anything from L.L. Bean that is not completely satisfactory.

I can still remember a 10-year-old backpack from L.L. Bean that I’d first used in college, then in my early working years, but which had begun to rip. Because I still wanted a backpack–and because my mother lives in Maine, near L.L. Bean’s flagship store–I brought that backpack with me on my Maine trip, took it to L.L. Bean’s customer service desk, and within a few minutes, they had replaced my worn-out backpack for a brand new one, for free. I’ve used the same guarantee to replace one of my daughter’s backpacks, though I had to pay $1.50 for the replacement because she wanted an “upgraded” model (I spotted her the buck fifty), and at the end of winter, I used that guarantee once more on my winter coat.

You see, about five years ago I’d purchased a full-length, down-filled L.L. Bean parka-like winter coat. It was the perfect coat for walking the dog on cold winter days, even if I did look like the Michelin Man tire guy. While the coat was pretty pricey (about $200), it was washable, warm and wonderfully versatile. It had a removable hood, Velcro closures on the cuffs to keep out cold breezes, and a zipper and snap closures in the front for extra warmth. Then, last winter, when I took the coat out for the first time, I noticed that the zipper had broken. No worries, I thought. I’ll just use the snaps to keep the coat closed, and then in spring, I’ll return it.

Unfortunately, when I went to return the coat this past spring (at a new L.L. Bean store that had opened in the Lehigh Valley area), it was out of stock and there wasn’t anything comparable to replace it. I could have waited and returned to the store another time to attempt the return at that time, but that store was more than an hour away, and I couldn’t justify the gas. So I asked what my return options were, and the clerk told me that they’d take the coat back, and give me a gift card for the full value of the coat–still about $200. (Man, if all of my investments held their value like that.)

Which brings me to how this money-back guarantee solved my reusable bottle issue (sort of), as the headline of this blog posting says.

As you’ll recall when the news broke last spring about BPA being found in some reusable bottles made of polycarbonate, I bid farewell to my Nalgene bottles and went on the search for new bottles. One bottle I’d found in the interim that my eldest daughter has claimed as her own is a bottle from We Add Up. It’s a sports-top water bottle made from recycled plastic and costs only $10.

My youngest daughter and I aren’t fond of the sports-top bottles, so we’ve still been looking for other kinds of bottles that we can use daily, around town, and for packing in lunches.

Well, yesterday a new L.L. Bean catalog arrived, and in it was L.L. Bean’s version of the Kleen Kanteen, a stainless steel reusable bottle that I’d heard great things about but could never find locally. Bean is now offering a stainless steel “Bean Canteen” in three sizes (12 ounce, 18 ounce and 27 ounce) and seven colors (black, pink, blue, red, silver, orange and green). All the bottles are open-mouthed, come with a loop top and have a carabiner clip for easy attaching to lunch boxes.

At an affordable $16.95 for the 18-ounce version, we’ll be using that L.L. Bean gift card with the dough on it from my returned coat to stock up on these bottles for free.

Cool Savings for Back to School

In this week’s Sunday paper, there was a circular for Staples annual “1 cent deals,” which begins on today, Sunday, July 6 and goes through Wednesday, July 9. (It’s for brick-and-mortar stores only. If you search on Staples.com, you’ll find nothing as remotely cheap as one cent!) Though my daughters’ supplies list won’t be posted on the school’s website for at least another month, you can bet that I’m going to be heading to Staples in the next day or two to take advantage of things like 1 cent 8-packs of pencils and 1 cent 2-pocket folders.

I learned about the Staples 1 cent trick last year, which helped me cut my back-to-school shopping costs in half. (The National Retail Federation says that the average family spent $92 on school supplies last year; we spent about $90. However, the year before, when we hadn’t adopted any of these money-saving approaches, we spent nearly double that per kid!) This year I hoping that nother trick I’d learned last year–the school supply box, a concept I’d learned from another mother I know–will help us cut our school supplies shopping bill by even more.

Much like the gift closet, whereby you stockpile all-occasion gifts that you pick u
p on sale, the school supply box is the place where you stash leftover school supplies from the previous year–and that are still in good condition. In fact, right after the last day of school in June, we went through both of my daughters’ backpacks to see what kinds of supplies we could salvage. I think we turned up three or four spiral notebooks that their teachers had insisted the kids must have for the class but which, in reality, were barely touched. You can bet that those ended up in our school supplies box.

Truth is, I’ve been stockpiling would-be school supplies all year long, and our box is now overflowing, meaning that we’re going to have to add a second school supply box to the mix very soon–especially if we do hit up that Staples sale before it ends. But the good news is that we probably won’t need any spiral notebooks or three-hole-punched lined paper–we’ve got leftovers from last year. And I made sure that my daughters brought home all of their stretchy book covers from the past year’s textbooks so that we can reuse them this coming school year. Other items we’ll be reusing for sure include their book bags, locker locks (we have to supply our own) and lunch boxes.

What have you been able to stockpile or can reuse when it’s time for the kids to go back to school?

13 Cents for School Supplies

On Tuesday we finally got around to taking advantage of the Staples one-cent school supplies sale. Good thing, too, since the sale ends on Wednesday.

But before we went to the store, I took an inventory of my school supplies box so I didn’t overbuy or buy duplicates of what I already had.

So what did I already have?

* 1 5-subject notebooks
* 1 3-subject notebook
* 12 1-subject notebooks
* 1 composition book
* approximately 500 sheets of lined, 3-hole paper
* 1 3-ring binder
* 1 3-pack of glue sticks
* 2 soft pencil cases
* 1 hard-side pencil case
* 5 folders
* 1 pack of 100 large index cards
* 5 stretchy notebook covers

One of the things that the teachers in our school district like to do is to color code the kids’ school supplies. So if they request that you get a red spiral notebook for math, they also want you to get a red folder. The same goes for a yellow spiral notebook and folder, a black spiral notebook and folder and so on.

Currently, the 12 1-subject spiral notebooks we own seem to be in all of the colors that the teachers tend to choose–yellow, blue, black, red, orange and green. Because none of the 5 folders we had matched these colors, my goal at Staples was to secure two folders in each of these popular colors. Also, I’d noticed in the Staples circular that pencils were on sale as were small containers of hand sanitizer.

In the past, if I’ve waited a day or two to go to the Staples one cent sale, I’m usually plum out of luck–in that the store has been shopped out and you can’t get a rain check for when more inventory shows up. For some reason, however, this time I lucked out.

Not only was the store fully stocked, but I was able to find everything I needed in the one-cent range. My only setback was that I was limited to 10 folders only, so we settled on two of each folder in black, red, green, blue and yellow. If somehow my kids end up with a teacher who favors orange, I’ll spring for the orange folders then.

All told we spent a whopping 13 cents on school supplies. Yes, you read that right: $.13.

Oh, but wait–it gets better. Because I signed up for one of those Staples Rewards cards way back when, you know the ones that they scan whenever you shop at the store, I’d recently received a rewards check for $16.50, which I used to pay for my purchase. Which leaves me with a $16+ store credit that I must use before August 31st.

I’m sure we’ll be doing plenty of back to school shopping by the time 8/31 rolls around. And if I’m lucky, there will be plenty more opportunities to get great deals on back-to-school supplies. I hope you’ve been able to take advantage of similar deals near you.

Coming up in the next few days: back-to-school products with a green twist. I’m currently collecting information for a forthcoming post. If you know of anything great and green and perfect for back to school, post a comment to tell me about it.