As you may have noticed in the lunch box post, our daughter is heading off to Kindergarten next week. I have a lot of last minute things to do to prepare for her to leave the nest. One of them is mend school uniforms. You might be wondering why I would be doing this since this is our first year to have a child in a uniform.

Like usual, there is a frugal story behind it...

It all started at the end of last school year. The last week of school the school host's a used uniform sale for the parents to sell/buy their kid's uniforms. The sale does have a few rules. The clothes must meet the dress code, be clean and in good repair (no missing buttons, etc). I was able to score some nice uniforms for a good price, but not enough to get her through the school week. That is when I wondered, what happens to the "not in good repair" uniforms? The school gives them back to the parents that brought them to the sale.

What is a mom to do? I still needed some more uniform clothes, but I really had a hard time justifying the cost of the new ones from Land's End. That is when I had to make a very hard decision. Do I save every penny I can for a couple months and buy her brand new uniforms? Or do I swallow my pride and ask around to find the damaged uniforms? As frugal as I am it was a hard decision. My daughter attends a private (religious based) school. All the big names in the community send there kids there along with those of us who scrape together the funds to send our kids to our Church's school for the religious education and excellent academics. Will my child be looked at differently? I'd love to say that I decided to swallow my pride and called lots of people and asked around. But I was a little too chicken....

What really happened was that I was at a garage sale and recognized the lady as being a mom to one of the older girls at the school. So I asked her if she had uniforms left from the sale. She said the only ones she had were in need of some repair. Of course I told her that I would take a look at them if she could find them. The uniforms were in great shape but where missing some buttons. Very easy to repair. She also had a jumper that had a little hole/ pulled thread in the skirt part. In the end I bought a large sack of uniforms for a $1.00! She was happy to get rid of them and I was happy to not spend a small fortune in school clothes. It took me about an hour to repair all of the clothes and I used extra buttons and thread I already owned. I was even able to fix the hole in the jumper!

Who knows, maybe next year I'll be a little braver and ask around for damaged uniforms... or not.

What would you do? Have any of you done the same thing?