Today, I took my daughter to get her school supplies since I had to go to Target to get one thing for our upcoming vacation. I am the rare breed who goes to Target perhaps once every 6 weeks to get essentials. Don't get me wrong, I like Target, with its bright interior, clean floors, and well stocked shelves with almost everything you need from clothing to toilet paper, to chicken stock. But, it sucks up so much time that thanks to Amazon subscription, I don’t really need to go to Target that often.
Anyway, I digress. Like I said, I took my daughter to get her school supplies today since it was tough to get all those little items from Amazon (believe me, I tried.) I should have purchased a Customized School Supply Kit through her school, but the order deadline was at the beginning of the summer. I was too busy shuttling her to her numerous summer activities, working from home, dealing with all those home contractors, making sure our house was cleaned and making sure dinner was made, that I couldn’t get her supplies until now. I assumed that with my Ninja sales hunting skills I can do much better.
Target had an area with almost all the school supplies she needed, and they even had the list right in the store. Take that, I can definitely get her list done in no time. S
oon, I realized that for many items on the list, we have to purchase more than she needed because Target only sold the larger packs. To get 2 glue sticks, we had to purchase a pack of 6. To get 1 highlighter, we ended up with a pack of 5. Her teacher wanted a few packs of yellow sticky notes, but Target only sold mega packs in multi-colors. I ended up spending some time hunting around the store in the office section to find smaller packs of these items. Then, some of the supplies seemed a bit too expensive. A generic protractor costs $2, so does a cheap clipboard. I am sure we can get the same one at the dollar store, but who has time to run to another store?
Half an hour into our shopping trip, as my Ninja shopping powers were waning. My daughter was taking her sweet time picking out the color of each folder, binder, and notebook. "Oooh, a yellow one...wait, the green one is prettier...wait, mom, I didn't see this red one before, it is better!" And then I had to explain why I picked a particular pencil case..."Honey, I agree, this $7 one you like has nice fabric with all these pretty pockets, but it is too thick inside the binder. Your teacher specified this cheap $1 plastic one because it is thinner."
Finally, we were down to 5 last items. Of course, they weren't at the school supplies section. Tissues and Clorox wipes were at another corner of the store, while the clipboard was by the office section. While trekking around the store to find the remaining items, we passed the toy and electronic sections. "Mommy, hold on, I want to check out this Lego set so I could put it on my birthday list". "Wait, mommy, can I check out this new iPad game? It is so cool!" “Ooooh, look at all those large TVs!”.
After a small distraction while gathering the last of the supplies and keeping my daughter on course, we were finally able to checkout. An hour and half later. When we got home, I realized I missed another pack of pencils. I guess I will have to take another quick trip to Target, but maybe alone this time. After hauling the supplies inside the house, I tallied up our purchase to see how much I'd saved. The total came to about $63 with tax, plus my daughter has to carry all of these supplies in her backpack on the first day of school. Not what I was expecting, but we got everything, well almost. When I finally got to sit down on the couch to relax after an exhausting trip to the store, I regrettably thought to myself I should have bought the customized school supplies from my daughters school. Lesson learned for this mom!
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