Super-Awesome School Shopping Roundup! ... Or Not

It's almost time for back-to-school shopping. If I were a good blogger I'd do some sort of roundup of the best places to shop, with price comparisons and a handy printable timetable of deals and coupons and a convenient list of stores that offer price matching.

But ... I tell stories about poop and do bad hair tutorials. So there's that.

Luckily, though, I did find a really nice site as far as all that info is concerned. The woman who puts this together at Passion for Savings is a genius (and far more patient, and much better at math, and probably prettier, than I am). It's totally comprehensive, man. You know what a coupon weenie I am so it's nice to have a simple, straightforward guide with all the legwork done.

My goal this year (besides saving money because three school-aged kids = ouch) is to find three things, primarily: durable shoes, durable jeans, and durable backpacks. Seriously, by the end of last school year my kids were looking like tattered ragamuffins with scuffed-up and holey ... well, everything. But I was too cheap to purchase replacements that late in the game, so I was like, "Here's some duct tape. If your lunch falls out of the hole in your backpack just pick it up. What's that? You don't like the way your toe pokes out of your shoe? Just be grateful it's not cold and rainy."

I'm kind of depressed at the lack of hand-me-downs in my house. You'd think that having four children of the same gender would practically guarantee that I'd only have to buy clothing occasionally. And that the things I do buy would last from child to child. But my boys are hard on clothes. Like, I might as well just cut to the chase by taking a brand-new pair of jeans and running them across a box grater and beating them on some gravel for a few hours and unraveling the bottoms. Because that's pretty much what they look like once the dudes have worn them for a month or so. I swear they're in Navy SEAL training instead of elementary school.

I'm hoping this year I don't have to run all over the earth looking for a yellow folder, because y'all? Last year there were exactly ZERO yellow folders to be found. Like, anywhere. I swear I went to five different stores and they were all out. Yet it was on the mandatory school supply list, so I called in a few favors and stood on a few corners and wrote to my congressman and staged some protests and resorted to some bribery and did things I'm not proud of and promised to offer up my next newborn in exchange for the elusive yellow folder. (Joke's on them, I'm not having any more kids.)

Despite it all, I'm actually kind of excited about school shopping. Are you? Anybody got any rockstar back-to-school shopping tips I need to know?