The back-to-school list I actually keep
After enough first days to lose count, here is what earns its place in the bag — and what quietly gets left off.
Every July the emails start. Buy this, don't forget that, the fifteen things your child apparently cannot begin the year without. Most of it, in my experience, comes home in June untouched. So here is the shorter list — the one I'd actually hand a daughter or a granddaughter, made of the things that got used until they wore out.
01Start with the bag, not the supplies
A good backpack is the one purchase worth slowing down for. Small enough that it sits on little shoulders without tipping them backward, with straps that actually adjust and a zip a five-year-old can work alone. Skip the licensed-character one they'll be embarrassed by in March; a plain, well-made bag in a colour they chose lasts years, and the independent shops do these beautifully.
02Two outfits, not ten
Children do not need a new wardrobe in August. They need two things that fit right now and feel good to put on — soft at the collar, easy at the waist, nothing that fights them at 7am. Buy those, and fill in the rest once you see what the actual weather and the actual classroom ask for.
03Label everything, and I mean everything
The single cheapest thing you can do to save yourself grief is put a name on it. Water bottles, jumpers, lunchboxes, the left shoe. A roll of iron-on or stick-on name labels costs almost nothing and comes home again and again from the lost-property basket.
What I leave off
The novelty stationery. The second lunchbox 'just in case.' The shoes a size too big to 'grow into' that blister them for a term first. And anything sold to you with the word must. Children are not projects to be outfitted; they're small people going somewhere new. Get the few good things right and let the rest be.
- The novelty stationery
- The second lunchbox 'just in case'
- Shoes a size too big to 'grow into'
- Anything sold to you with the word must
My rule, after all these years: buy less, buy it a little better, and put a name on it. That's the whole list.
Everything for the first day
Our hand-picked back-to-school edit — bags, first-day outfits, labels and keepsakes, plus the independent boutiques that stock them.
