When you need to buy your children new clothes at the start of the new school year, you may feel something akin to existential dread.
Not only do you need to find things which will fit them and be decent to wear, but they also need to like it and wear it when you return home, and if you’ve danced this dance before, you know it’s anything but easy.
However, experts at ModerneChild may have some useful tips on how to make the shopping trip far less painful and tedious than it is shaping up to be.
Manage Expectations from the Start
This is often the problem when you actually go shopping; you have one thing in mind, while your children have dreamed up something completely other.
The discrepancy between the expectation and what is offered can be a source of turmoil and potential conflict between you and your children.
Before you go out shopping, talk to your children and reach an agreement about what you will need to buy and how much you can spend on it.
Finding Ideas Online
If you want to see what you can expect to see in the stores today, there are plenty of clothing stores online. Go through a couple of pages online and you may find some things you and your children both agree on.
What’s more, if you decide to buy your clothes online, perhaps you can avoid all of the hassle altogether. There are plenty of unique children’s clothing stores online where you can find all you need and more.
Shoes
Consider what kinds of shoes your kids may need when they get back to school. Depending on where you are, it can get fairly cold really quickly, so don’t be afraid to look a bit ahead and buy more than one pair of different types of footwear.
Buying online can once again give you the edge of not having to actually go into the stores and facing that dreaded sentence ‘We don’t have that model in stock’ when your child has their mind set on it.
Buying online, you can get your wanted model no matter where it is ‘in stock’ and it will arrive to your address no matter where it is shipped from.
Trade Concessions
You will need to compromise on some things, there’s really no way around it. Let your kids pick some of the clothes they really want, but in return, you need to ensure that you get to buy them some clothes which they can wear to school on a day-to-day basis.
Teach Them to Budget Early
Another way you can hope to limit the potential problems is to tell your kids how much money can be spent on their clothes.
Once they see how much money they have to buy clothes and what they need, they may be persuaded to concede and buy rationally. However, this approach requires you to be adamant about the money that can be spent and not give in.
Buy Some Things Ahead
You know that the prices for back-to-school clothes now will be a bit overblown because it is the high season for that type of clothes.
However, if you plan a bit ahead, you may be able to get some major discounts.
Even though the fall might be far away and you aren’t considering rubber boots and light jackets essential shopping, look around.
You may be surprised how cheap they are right now. If you can reach a consensus with your kids about what they will wear this fall, you can pinch some clothes a lot cheaper and make sure that they are not sold out.
Coupons?
Even if you are not a person who normally buys with coupons and discounts, look around for those. Buying all new clothes can be fairly expensive and getting even a 10-15% discount can mean big savings, especially if you have more than one child.
As you can see, shopping for clothes will never be stress-free or even conflict-free, but you can mitigate the fallout with a few good tips and always remember to plan just a bit ahead.
