Why Back-to-School Shopping Leaves You Exhausted By Tuesday (And Practical Tips That Help)
My steering wheel is sticky from a blue raspberry slushie Jax spilled 20 minutes ago, my calves ache from walking on concrete for three hours, and I just sent a messy text to my sister that reads: It’s only Tuesday and I’m already beat over school shopping lol. The mall and other stores so crowded but the kiddos made out with fun school stuff and lots of clothes 😏next stop shoes 😩. I drop my phone against the steering wheel and glance in the backseat. Jax, my 7-year-old, is passed out against the car door, his new dinosaur graphic tee crumpled under his cheek. Lila, 10, is hunched over my old phone, scrolling through sneaker reels to make sure the pair she wants is actually the one all the fifth graders are wearing this year.
We started this morning at Target, where the back-to-school section was so packed you could barely turn a cart without knocking over a display of notebooks. We hit the clothing outlet next, where Lila grew three inches over the summer and every pair of last year’s jeans hit her mid-calf. We dug through racks, waited in a 15-person checkout line, and by the time we got to the mall, I was already ready to call it quits. But the kids perked up the second we hit the stationery store: Lila found her neon pink sparkly binder, Jax got a pack of glow-in-the-dark gel pens, and both walked out with fidget keychains to hang on their new backpacks. We left with three new pairs of jeans, two new hoodies, enough pencils to last the whole semester, and a lot of leftover shopping list still staring me in the face. Shoes. The big one.
I’ve been a part-time classroom aide for six years, so I see first-hand what back-to-school transition looks like. Every August, I watch kids walk into the building on the first day, tight-shouldered and quiet, clinging to their parent’s hand. The ones who come in with the shiny new supplies they picked out themselves? They loosen up faster. They’ll show their new desk neighbor their gel pens, point out the print on their new sneakers, and that small little icebreaker is enough to get them through the first hour of jitters. I didn’t connect that to my own shopping trips until two years ago, when I decided I was too busy to deal with crowded stores. I ordered everything online: plain binders, basic sneakers, neutral jeans, all checked off the list in 20 minutes while I sat on my couch after the kids went to bed. It was efficient, cheap, and zero hassle. On the first day of school, Lila refused to put on the sneakers I’d bought, saying they “weren’t right” and she didn’t want anyone to make fun of them. Jax left his binder on the playground the first week, because he didn’t even care enough to keep track of it—it was just mine, not his.
That’s when I realized this messy, tiring shopping ritual isn’t just about buying stuff. For kids, almost everything about the new school year is out of their control. They don’t get to pick their teacher, their classmates, or what time they have to wake up every morning. Picking out their own binder, their own jeans, their own sneakers? That’s the first small chance they get to take control of the year ahead. It’s how they test out their new identity: third grader instead of second grader, fifth grader instead of fourth. The stuff is just a tangible version of that change.
I’ve picked up a few small tricks over the years that cut down on my stress without taking that chance away from the kids, and none of them require a big schedule overhaul or a huge budget. First, I order all the boring basics online for curbside pickup: the packs of loose-leaf paper, the boxes of tissues for the classroom, the packs of pencils, all that stuff the kids don’t care what it looks like. That way, I only drag everyone into stores for the stuff they actually want to see and touch and pick out themselves. That cuts my in-store time by almost half. Second, I give each kid a fixed $25 allowance for fun extras, beyond the basic supplies and clothes. If they want the $30 neon binder instead of the $5 plain one, they can chip in the extra $5 from their own piggy bank. That keeps me from blowing my budget, and it gives them practice making small money choices, too. Third, I stopped forcing myself to get everything done in one weekend. I used to think checking the whole list off by the first week of August meant I was a prepared parent, but now I know spreading it out over a week or two keeps all of us from getting worn out. Today just happened to be the day we could do clothes and stationery, so shoes get done whenever—even if that’s Thursday, after everyone’s had a chance to rest.
I reach back and nudge Jax’s foot to wake him up. He rubs his eyes and mumbles something about getting a soft pretzel after shoes, and I say yes. Lila’s already out of the car, waving at a friend from her soccer team who’s also shopping for shoes, her new hoodie swinging as she runs over. I grab my purse, lock the car, and stretch my sore shoulders. I’m still beat, it’s still only Tuesday, and I know we’re in for at least another hour of trying on a dozen pairs of shoes before we find two that fit and that both kids agree on. I still have to fold a load of laundry when I get home, pack lunches for tomorrow, and finish the permission slip for Lila’s field trip that’s due next week. That small feeling of being behind doesn’t go away just because we picked out binders today. But I also know that when they walk into their new classrooms next week, that little bit of choice they got today will take the edge off their jitters. That’s worth the sore feet and the crowded stores, even if I’m already counting down to my pajamas and a glass of iced tea tonight.
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