The Salvation Army of Monroe County and the Department of Human Services of Monroe County coordinated its biggest-ever backpack and school supply donation drive this summer.

If your family meets the eligibility requirements for this program, but wasn’t able to attend the back-to-school festival days in Bedford Township and Monroe, contact the Salvation Army at 241-0440 for follow-up. The Salvation Army staff informed other human service and social service agencies Monday that there are still some backpacks available for distribution.

If you do / did not qualify for this program, there were other school supply distributions in the area that did not have such detailed application procedures. However, those events also are now done for the season.

If you are still looking for school supplies on a budget, here are some tips:

• Clean out your child’s toy box, craft supply drawer and check under the bed and in the closet. You may find perfectly good pens, pencils, glue bottles and crayons that were barely used last year because they got “lost.”
• Pay close attention to the retail store sales fliers and shop around. There have been different items on sale each week at various local stores since about July 4. Yes, even those expensive graphing calculators have been on sale at times.
• Purchase basic or plain items such as yellow pencils instead of character pencils. Those are the ones that have been on sale most frequently in recent weeks. (Hint: don’t take the kids with you to the store, and they won’t know those colorful pop culture school supplies were even on the shelves.)
• Watch for those back-to-school bundle promotions in the store sales fliers such as buy these designated grocery products and get $10 off a backpack or a pair of shoes.
• It’s perfectly fine to buy one or two new outfits for “dress up” days and get the rest of your childrens’ school clothes second-hand. Spend some time looking through the local thrift shops and school uniform “hand-me-down” closets for pants and shirts that can be played in until they wear out.
• Figure out where else you can cut back on household expenses so to free up cash for school needs. There’s lots of links on my sidebars and blogrolls with information for families from various circumstances and lifestyles.