Where to Find Cheap School Supplies
August 1, 2007 by Deborah Ng
Filed under General
My son is entering kindergarten this fall, and though he attended preschool, this is really my first experience with back to school shopping. I knew school supplies don’t come cheap, but I wasn’t prepared for how expensive they really are. I did find several places to find inexpensive school supplies, and I’m happy to share them with you today.
- Freecycle – Yup. I’m talking about Freecycle again. Believe it or not there are plenty of people giving away markers, pencils, notebooks, folders and more. Act quickly though, this stuff goes fast!
- The dollar store – I don’t know why so many people crinkle their noses at the thought of buying stuff from the dollar store. While some things aren’t the best quality, you can still find some great, inexpensive school supplies such as notebooks, folders, rulers and more.
- Stock up during sales – This won’t help you now, but at the end of September school supplies will start to go on clearance. Stock up and save. Stores such as Target and Walmart especially have some great bargains.
- Garage sales – Believe it or not, garage sales are great places to find school supplies. A lot of times people clean out their closets and find supplies they no longer need.
When shopping for school supplies, do comparison shop. Check the store flyers to see which stores have the best prices. You might have to shop at different stores for different products but if it saves you good money, it’ll be totally worth it.
The office supply stores like Staples and Office Depot have had great deals. So I’ve been stocking up and buying the maximum amount. Any leftovers will be donated via my mom’s club for kids in need. Office Depot also has a program to give a certain percentage of our purchase to our school.
I’d heard of Freecycle, but never would have thought to look there for school supplies. I agree with Anne-Marie too about office depot. You have to get their purple office depot brand glue sticks. (they dry clear.) I’ve tried some of the cheaper brand of glue sticks and they either dry up or don’t stick well (which is the point of glue!) Actutally all the office depot brand items are very good quality.
I had no idea B5 has another Thrifty blog, I tend to visit the Thrifty Mommy Blog quite a bit… Freecycle is interesting tip for school supplies, I link to them on my blog, but am sad that the group closest to me is in the next county. I don’t even try to get at the deals, some one else is sure to get them first.
Discountschoolsupplies.com is an excellent place to find arts and crafts and manipulatives that the kids can use to continue their preschool experience at home..
I like the advice not give in to the demands of the school for brand-name supplies. I have shopped at some online dollar stores for school supplies, and was pretty much satisfied. It’s like I would buy in a Family Dollar store. I liked 99centsdollarstore.com, because they had more of a variety for .99¢.
As a teacher I try to shop online as much as possible. I find most of the online stores give pretty good discounts compared to the physical stores. I’ve had good luck with cheapcher.com. I also like Freecycle when it comes to finding interesting items for the kids to do crafts with.