We are going through all the feels in our house right now. It’s a bittersweet time for us as our sweet first born is starting preschool. I’m so excited to watch him thrive and grow but also so sad to watch him leave me five days a week. Tell me parents, is this normal to have this surge of conflicting emotions over sending your kiddo to school?

With back to school of course comes, the supply list. For some reason, the supply list was not even on my radar. I didn’t even consider he would need school supplies, so I definitely didn’t budget for it. I thought for sure we would break the bank since I didn’t anticipate this, but I have one MAJOR tip that I feel saved us BOOCKOOS of bucks.

Being a preschooler, the list wasn’t super long or full of crazy expensive items. But especially these days, every dollar adds up. At first, I thought “Oh! I’ll see how much of this stuff I can get from Dollar Tree!” to save money, but when I visited Walmart I found that a lot of the smaller items were UNDER $1! This stopped me in my tracks, so I decided I would be returning to Walmart to get what I could of our supply list.

Before back to school shopping, the first thing I did and the thing I think saved me the MOST money was to “shop my house”. Because teachers are responsible for furnishing a lot of things out of pocket, they will outsource some of this to school supply list to lessen this burden for them. This tends to be common household items like paper towels, boxes of tissues, Ziplock bags, baby wipes and disinfecting wipes. Luckily for me (and my pocket) I was able to just grab these items from our back stock closet as they are items I buy in bulk. Next, I went to Walmart and bought anything that was UNDER $1 or that I knew I wouldn’t find at Dollar Tree. This was things like his backpack, blunt tip scissors, jumbo crayons, glue stick, glue bottle, markers, and playdough. Anything left on the list, I went to Dollar Tree to pick up. And in all, I only spent $30 out of pocket for EVERYTHING including his backpack.

I feel like it’s especially easy to feel overwhelmed with the newness of back to school with our first-timer, but also with the costs associated with lengthy supply lists. Though this post is coming a little late in the season (starting school for the first time, new baby, recent birthdays, among other life events – it’s been a crazy time over here!) I hope folks find these tips helpful for upcoming schoolyears. It never hurts to shop around your home for items you might have in backstock, and then price compare. You might think one place is going to be cheaper, but you really don’t know for sure until you do some research. Happy school season, ya’ll!