Gosh I’m tired.
This morning Master J comes bounding into our bedroom, panic in his voice. “MUM! IT’S SEVEN-THIRTY-FOUR!!!” And before I’d even had a chance to mentally register that it was, in fact, a school day, my mama radar was in full force and I was already up and in the kitchen. There’s nothing like being utterly, completely asleep and then suddenly awake and expected to, you know, do stuff.
Now, normally J’s taxi comes at 7:40. So a 7:34 start to the day would be near disasterous, although not impossible. I’ve done it before. The child went to school with a piece of toast in one hand and one shoe untied but by gosh, he was in that taxi on time! Big tick for mama, LOL. Thankfully, however, there have been changes to his taxi run and now the driver doesn’t arrive at the house until after 8:00. Of course my sleep-deprived brain did not remember this until 7:58 after repeated exclaimations of “Where IS that taxi?!!” but oh well. I could have slept another ten minutes!
The only reason my mornings run so smoothly is because I have a working Evening Routine. Part of this includes pre-making the kids’ school lunches. I make sandwiches, wrap and pop them in the fridge overnight. I leave their lunchboxes open on the benchtop with most of the ‘extras’ already inside. I fill water bottles and refrigerate those. Consequently I can go from zero (comatose) to waving a breakfasted, dressed, clean toothed child out the door in something like 8 minutes flat. I would completely die if I had to battle the lunchbox lunacy first thing in the morning.
I also lay out the kids’ uniforms in the family room. I realise this won’t work forever, but for right now, when they’re not concerned about ’sibling cooties’, changing in front of the gas heater (and sometimes each other) on a frosty morning is working quite well. Between pre-making lunches and laying out their school clothes, I must save something in the vicinity of eleventy-six minutes each morning.
I am also lucky enough to live in a great neighbourhood with a good public primary (elementary) school close by. I would hazard a guess and say every public primary school in Australia wears some type of uniform, ranging from ‘here are the school colours, you’re free to pick what you need based on those’ right through to ‘the only acceptable uniform items are ones you purchase through the school uniform shop and sorry, a polo shirt with the school emblem is going to cost you $39 and oh, I see you need a dozen of those suckers and that’s just for starters (*insert evil laugh*) - will that be cash, credit card or second mortgage?’ Thank goodness our kids have never attented that type of school! (Private school is a whole other kettle of fish but I’ve heard some scary, expensive uniform stories - just don’t have personal experience having to buy them) Though the local school governing council sets some uniform guidelines, for the most part, you are free to choose whatever brand or style you like according to the school colours and the guidelines (no slogans and so on). In addition to this, our school does have a uniform shop where you can buy the more expensive polos, school dresses and so on (with logos), but they also run a consignment section, which is where I purchased Miss Moo’s winter pinafore and two summer dresses, saving a boatload and helping the prior owners to recoup some of their cost. After 18mo they have held up very well and will be re-consignable when Moo is done with them. But as for the day-to-day uniform items, such as shorts, long pants, sweatshirts etc, you get to source them yourself. This is a good thing, because it allows you to shop for the best deals, which almost always pop up in the last couple of weeks in January, right before the new school year begins.
There’s a particular schoolwear brand down here (Stubbies) which I have been in love with from the first day. Thankfully, the January back to school sales are filled with discounted Stubbies clothing so I am able to outfit all the kids at a reasonable cost. As luck would have it, despite always having been at a different school to the younger two, Master J’s uniform at his new school is in the same colour scheme. When he outgrows his stuff, Boofah gets to inherit it. The other thing I love about this brand is that it almost never needs ironing. Yeah, you heard me, LOL. I don’t iron school pants, shorts, polos or windcheaters. About the only item which graces the ironing board is Miss Moo’s pinafore and dresses, when she wears them, because they are pleated. Everything else I simply smooth out by hand and you can’t tell the difference. Of course, this method becomes void if you leave a dried load of laundry crumpled in the bottom of the basket for a week, but hey.
I also purposely keep a high number of uniform items in rotation. Each kid gets three ‘bottoms’ (shorts or pants, depending on the season), five polos and (during winter) two or three windcheaters. This allows me to ignore the uniform laundry all week and do two loads all at once on Saturdays. Usually its the tops that get grubby first, hence a clean one every day, but the pants can be carefully resmoothed and worn again.
I do not always need to re-purchase entire school wardrobes in January of each year, either. Boofah is rather short and is still in shorts and polos from his first year at school (three years ago!) I have replaced his long winter pants this year but he wore them out at the knees before he outgrew them - and I think three years is a good run for something he wears just about every weekday. Master J, on the other hand, is growing like a weed and generally needs new pants every year. It’s crazy, but you never see the really good school clothing sales repeated in, say, April for the coming winter term. It’s pretty much all up in January so if you want the best deals possible you have to learn to anticipate growth for a whole year. It also means that doing one big shopping trip for school gear can be SCARY. Presuming everyone grows out of his or her uniform in a given year (unlikely, but go with me here) that’s 9 pairs of pants ($20 each on sale), 9 pairs of shorts (skorts for Moo - $10 each on sale), fifteen polos (around $7 each on sale), 6-9 windcheaters (this is completely unpredictable each year and I often have a hard time finding appropriately plain, navy sweaters to suit…I’m almost never able to purchase them all when I need them and are still looking when the cooler weather arrives) - hundreds of dollars and that is before new socks (the kids wear white socks year round and totally destroy them each year, so I replace pretty much every pair in the January sales), underwear (they usually need replacements), and various girly hair bobbles in school colours for Moo. Throughout the year we also tend to misplace school hats at an amazing rate so I factor in four per year for each kid. At $7 each (purchased through the finance room at the school and available year round, thankfully) that’s $84 just in hats! Both the kids’ schools have a ‘no hat, no outside play’ policy so this isn’t the area to economize.
What about you guys? Does your primary (elementary) school have a uniform? If not, do you purchase your own ‘uniform’ of acceptable casual clothes each year? How much clothing do you keep in rotation at any given time specifically for school days? Where do you usually shop for deals?
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