Like lots of families up and down the country today marks the end of the summer holidays and it’s a day of getting organised for us. Believe me when you have four children to get ready for school its no mean feat so if there’s anything that can be done to make it stress free I’m all for it. Not only is it back to school tomorrow it is the first day of my new job which means I really do need to be organised as I can’t be running around looking for things as we’re going out the door. My organisation skills are something that drives dad of 3 crazy as he can’t understand the need for it!
I’ve always tried to get as much as possible for the return to school locally however the last few years this hasn’t been possible and we’ve had to either shop online or travel to Carmarthen where there are more shops. However this summer that’s changed with the arrival of a brand new B and M store in the town. Now some people may think it’s strange to get excited about a new shop opening but honestly it’s not! In the four weeks it’s been open it’s brought visitors to the town and on the occasions I’ve visited it’s been very busy, which is great news. Anyway back to the subject in hand, back to school, I was very kindly given some vouchers by B and M to visit the store and kit the children out ready for school.
So last week I got everyone into the car and we headed up to B and M, we arrived about 9,30am amongst complaints from the older two that it was too early to be out shopping. I’ve found on previous visits to the store that getting their early is advisable as parking fills up quickly. I decided a trolley would be handy with shopping for all four children so Rowan armed with my trolley token went to get one. This was also the older two’s first visit to the new store and they were quite overwhelmed by all the items on sale and the sheer size of the store compared to the B and M stores we have previously visited. So we had a look around and I picked up a few other bits as we made our way to the Back to School section which was located on the far right hand side (if you stand facing the store) of the store next to the toys. The children quickly spotted the bright signage and were off to have a look.
Now I was expecting a small area set aside for Back to School items however the reality was there were in fact at least six sections full of products from bags, lunch bags, all kinds of stationary and even shoes, socks and underwear, I was impressed. I told the children they could each choose some stationary, a bag and lunch bag if they wanted one (Luc and Trystan already had school bags and didn’t want new ones and Trystan has school dinners) I gave them free range as to the characters they wanted too. It took about half an hour in the end for each of them to settle on what they wanted. They had half filled the trolley with the items and I tried to mentally add up the total of the items to see if we were near the total value of the vouchers I had but it wasn’t possible.
By this time we had been in the store for just over an hour and the children were all getting distracted by other items they wanted so I quickly steered them towards the checkout. They all helped unload the trolley onto the checkout and went to help pack the items at the other end. I paid for the non-back to school items first so I could keep them separate, with those items packed it was time to see how much the children’s chosen items came too, Trystan thought we had spent over the value of the vouchers and closely watched as each item was scanned. At the end I was amazed when in fact the total came to £49.00, I like Trystan was sure we had gone over the £50 budget we had, as no change can be given with voucher payments we added a bag of sweets to the items to round it up to £50. We then headed back to the car and home.
Back at home we laid out all the items we had bought from the back to school range. Here is what we had, we had a few duplicates so they are not shown in the pictures.
3 x Star Wars A4 folders
2 x Star Wars stationary Set
1 x My Little Pony A4 folder
Tsum Tsum pencil case
3 x star wars pencil cases
1 pair of frozen girls School Shoes
1 messenger style star wars bag
Minion’s lunch bag
Maths set
A pack of biros
DC comic super stationary set
Bic stationary set
Tsum Tsum stationary set
A4 writing pad
I think you’ll agree it was a pretty impressive hall, well I was certainly impressed and have four happy children after the shopping trip. I’m also impressed by the quality of the products we bought too, the shoes and bags are very well made and will withstand a lot of use which is just what you want from these products but with an affordable price tag. The whole trip was stress free trip and we were able to get all stationary and bags needed in one place which is a bonus. The school shoes for Erin were an added bonus. So a big thank you to B and M for making this back to school shop so stress free and easy. This morning the children have spent some time labelling their things and getting them all ready for the morning.
You can find out more about B and M’s back to school range by visiting here
Disclaimer: We were sent some vouchers by B and M for the purpose of this post however the content is 100% my own.