I found a bargain, and I thought I would share it with you.

I went to a local Walmart intending to buy one thing.  I managed to find my way into the back-to-school and office supplies sections (unsurprising, really).   And it was there that a few good bargains caught my eye.

For those of you who live in a different part of the United States, or for my international readers, public school in the southern part of the USA usually starts either at the beginning or middle of August.  Many northern states usually don’t start until September, but most southerners are used to seeing school supplies in stores starting in June.

There are usually several seasonal aisles dedicated to the madness of resupplying parents, students, teachers, and stationery addicts with all new notebooks, pens, papers, stickers, folders, art supplies, etc.  And while a stationery fiend like me wishes these lovely shelves were around the whole year, all good things must come to an end.

In mid-August, the stores switch over those seasonal display shelves to Halloween and Autumn items.  This means they severely mark down the prices of the school supplies in order to move the inventory out of the store.

Since I was in a Walmart, and not my usual one, I thought I would take a look at their supplies to see if they had any of the stock the store closer to my house didn’t carry.  And surprise, surprise!  They had already marked down two aisles of school supplies.

The nice three ring binders were $0.25.  The spiral bound notebooks were also a quarter ($0.25).  Sticker booklets and small boxes of crayons: you guessed it, $0.25.

I started looking more closely at the shelves, as you do when you can sense a good bargain.

I managed to find a miniature Happy Planner, which is normally $14.88, for only $1.00.  The daily insert packs for the same Happy Planner, which are normally $3.43 each, were only a quarter each.

There were certain booklets of stickers which were marked down close to 90% off.   They normally ran for $12.82, but I got one for $0.25 and two other ones for $1.25. 

I also picked up a few sticker booklets from the Pen & Gear brand, which is Walmart’s in-house brand for office supplies, for $0.25 each.

The spiral bound notebooks and composition books were all on sale, so I picked up six with attractive colors and college ruled lines.

All together, the items that would normally cost $71.84 were purchased for a grand total of $6.69.

I feel accomplished, y’all.  That feels like a great bargain!

If you are a teacher, a parent, student, or stationery addict, make sure to check your local Walmart or general store in the near future. If they haven’t already marked the back-to-school supplies down, they will be soon.

If you have a few extra dollars to spare, please consider donating some of the supplies you can snag to your local schools. 

Teachers in America and all over the world are underpaid, and teachers here in the US spend an average of $500 PER YEAR out of their own pocket to buy school supplies for their classrooms. 

Paper, pens, pencils, colored pencils, markers, construction paper, glue, class sets of scissors, rulers, facial tissues, hand sanitizer, etc. for 130+ kids to use for the full year. 

The schools do not refund this.  Not all families can afford to purchase the school supplies requested by the teacher, so the teachers have to make sure they have supplies on hand.

And yes, I know that a lot of schools will be going virtual this year, but there are ALWAYS kids who do not have the same level of technological access, or the internet access, to function via virtual schooling. Schools will open in some capacity this year, so please, consider donating supplies to your local school.

Thank you,

Jules the Dawdling Writer

Milwordy (Million Word) Writing Challenge post will be live 8/27/2020 at 9:00 AM Eastern.