Get Organized for School and Help Kids in Need
school supplies for kids
Can you imagine hitting hard times and not being able to buy school supplies for your kids? It just makes me cringe to think about it. I cannot imagine telling my kids that we don’t have the money to buy their supplies. It makes me sad to think about the hit that a child’s dignity would take if they had to show up at school without supplies while other students showed up with crisp notebooks, clean erasers, sharp pencils and reams of paper. I live in a nice community and we have people struggling here and it could be any one of us.
I am so grateful that we have a Family Center here where the staff works tirelessly to help these families that are struggling. They are facing a great need this year, estimating 700 students will need to come to them for free supplies. We have 25% of our students in our community receiving free or reduced lunch-wow, wow.
When you get organized for school this year, it can mean reaching beyond your family to help other children arrive on the first day with a backpack full of supplies. This is a great time to take advantage of .20 cent glue sticks and .25 cent boxes of crayons by placing a few more items in your cart to donate to another child. If you don’t have a local family center, you can even bring those supplies to the school as I’m sure teachers will know who needs them the most.
If you have extra shelf space somewhere in your home, then consider stocking up on supplies after school starts. I have seen amazing prices on spiral notebooks and reams of paper at Target after school is back in session. This year I would like to stock up for on supplies that my own children may need later in the year as well as for the Family Center’s school supply drive NEXT year. Now I only condone this type of long-term storage if you truly have the space and these items won’t displace other items in your home (professional organizer’s disclaimer).
Over the weekend we had a neighborhood barbeque and we asked everyone to bring school supplies for the Family Center (photo above). We had an awesome party and today I was able to drop off supplies to help kids who truly need the help and that feels super awesome!
Tags: Add new tag, DIY organization, get organized for school, Home Organization, Home Organization Blog, organizing kids, school supplies, space, Target
Growing up, my parents didn’t always have money to buy me and my younger brother school supplies each year, we just always reused what we had from the year prior.
Now if a teacher requested a special item then of course we got it, but I never really minded that my erasers were not new.
I guess it all depends how you grow up though.
I grew up in a community where 75% of kids get free or reduced lunch, myself included.