Summer is almost over and for us parents, it only means one thing, school year is about to start! And that comes with school supplies shopping.

Well, I am almost done with school supplies (thank goodness for blog projects and direct advertisers) just a few more and we’re ready for school year 2012-2013. Like the previous years, I went to Divisoria to buy uniforms, socks and under shirts. This year, though, I got the chance to buy other school stuff such as coloring materials and pencils. It is so hard to say no to Divisoria’s budget friendly price. If not for the pots that I bought, I could have bought a lot more school supplies like notebooks and papers, artworks and pencil cases.

I bought polo for my boys as well as khaki pants. Divisoria price for white jacket style polo is at 85 PhP (size for 7-9 year old), for the khaki pants, it’s 115 PhP. I also bought 18 pairs of socks for 600+ PhP (a dozen is at 420 PhP). I was surprised with the undershirts price, I bought Loving Couple white sando (size 14) for 560 per dozen (tumaas ang presyo!). My suki for garments is located near 168, I learned not to buy items from street vendors and look for wholesalers instead.

Initially, my plan is to buy yellow cartolina for our Spongebob Party but seeing how cheap other school items were, I just have to buy:

• T-Pencil (one dozen with 3 pencils free) 48 PhP
• Crayola (16 colors) 171 PhP for 6 box
• White cartolina for 30 PhP, 10 Pcs

I was tempted to buy notebooks, 85 PhP for 10 pcs! ang mura! kaso wala na ako pera 🙁 My suki for school supplies is located near Divisoria Mall, same street as the gulay street vendors.

For black shoes and notebooks, we went to SM Megamall to shop. I used GC that I got from blog events…2 pairs of black shoes from Chicco Store using Chicco GC. For rubber shoes, we bought their pairs from SM department store. We bought World Balance rubber shoes as we this rubber shoes brand is tried and tested… their first pair was 2 years ago and they’re still using it until now! ang tibay di ba! at mura pa.. less than 1000 PhP each 🙂

For the notebooks, I told them to choose Advance over Orions.. eh mas mura ung Advance.. kaso lang mas kaunti characters, buti may Avengers! Actually, I want  the Orions (specially Phineas and Ferb!) designs and the quality of paper (mas maputi).. but I have to be practical. We also bought a few folders and envelopes and ball pen (baka mag pen na ang Grade 3 ko) and some pad papers.

From the school supplies section, we spent a little over 1000 so were entitled with a free Lego inpired notebook.. kaso it took the saleslady forever bago nacompute ung nabili namin sa section na un.. kumusta naman sa haba ng resibo! Good thing, the manager was really nice and gave us 2 notebooks instead of 1.. yay! Their school bags from last school year were still in good condition so we didn’t bought new ones.

We’re almost ready for SY 2012-2013.. Next week I will be starting new routines so that the kids wouldn’t have a hard time adjusting.

If you’re not yet done shopping, here are some practical tips in shopping for school supplies:

• List down what your kids need. List everything, from uniform to socks to shoes, to erasers and sharpeners. After listing everything, see what you need to buy and what you can reuse or recycle.
• Bring your kids when buying school shoes, they will be the one to use it, so you need to know and test if the shoes will be comfortable for them. And though it’s very tempting to buy a size bigger to your kids size, don’t do that, yes their feet will grew bigger in no time but it would be hard for them to walk on shoes bigger than their feet size.
• The same applies to buying uniform, parents have the tendency to buy one size bigger with the idea that their kids will outgrew it in no time. Even so, it would just be uncomfortable for your kids to wear something that’s not their size. What I always do is to buy their exact size in limited quantities and buy another set in one size bigger. In that case, if ever my boys outgrew their uniform, I have a ready replacement.
• If you are going to buy school supplies and you’ll be bringing your kids, buy earlier and not on weekends. It would be more tedious to buy on weekends specially on malls as people flock malls on weekends.
• Use your credit card if you have one to avail of promos and discounts given to credit card holders.
• And lastly, stick to your list and don’t buy anything that is not needed.

HAPPY SHOPPING!