1. Contact your local paper, church, organizations, and community centers for FREE school supplies. Often newspapers list their top donors for the year and can help guide you in the right direction.
http://detroit.cbslocal.com/tag/school-supplies/
2. Pack your lunches from home and save a ton at school. Get your kids involved in cooking and help them learn the benefits of making your own meals!
3. Set a budget! If you have the means to create a budget for your kids clothes, give them a set amount they can spend, depending on their age, allow them to purchase clothes within the budget (making sure of course they get at least one new pair of jeans, shoes, and a fall jacket!) This will help them learn budgeting skills that they can use in the future!
4. Shop at home first. You never know, maybe you have extra glue sticks, crayons, notebooks, or folders lying around from last year! Go shopping at home before you buy something you already have.
5. Let your child splurge on 1 school supply item (so they can get excited for school!) and keep the rest used/low cost.
6. Check out larger/smaller packaging. Do you really need 8 tubes of glue? Sometimes the smaller packing on school supplies has better deals. Check the prices.
7. https://groups.freecycle.org/group/motorcityfreecycle/description
This is a group in Detroit that lists items that people are trying to give away in an effort to be more green! Join the group for notifications on things that people in your community are giving away for free.
8. Leave your kids at home when doing the bulk of school supply shopping. It will be difficult to focus on finding the best deals when they're trying to convince you to get folders with ponies on them! :)
9. I don't know about you guys, but as a kid all of my binders ALWAYS broke very early on in the school year. I recently discovered that you can return broken binders at Staples up to a year after your purchase!! (of course, bring your receipt!)
Any tips we missed? Let us know in the comments below!
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