School Uniforms

I went back-to-school clothes shopping for my kids yesterday.  Considering they are homeschooled, I could have just bought them all new pajamas but we do actually leave the house most days so they needed real clothes.

Shopping for Ruby was easy.  She is four and everything in her department is still cute and affordable.  I really had to exercise a lot of self control or I could have spent the entire budget on her.  With all the hand-me-downs from her older sister, she needed the least.

Grace is almost nine and the choices in her department are starting to scare me.  Some of it is okay but a lot of it is trying to turn her into a little Hannah Montana.  Or is it just Miley Cyrus now?  Either way, I don't want Grace looking like that.  Oh, and the skinny jeans.  Really?  At nine?  I don't think so.  Even the pajamas have started to look a bit too adult. 

Then there's Daniel.  Daniel is eleven but I've had a problem shopping for him since the age of three.  That's when all the cute baby boy stuff was replaced by punk clothes.  Now his choices in jeans are either nerdy or trashy.  Nerdy is what we called "new" jeans when I was a kid.  Trashy is what those new jeans used to look like when they were worn out and ready for the trash.  Great choices.  Great choices that seem to get more and more expensive the older he gets. 

I felt like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. My kids already risk being nerdy just by being homeschooled.  I enjoy the fact that they're missing a lot of the trendy crap other kids their ages do but I don't want them to be completely weird.  I needed to find a happy medium and not go broke.

In many of the stores, I kept seeing a school uniform section.  It kept drawing me over.  How easy would that be?  Three color choices: white, navy, khaki.  Three bottom choices: shorts, skirts, pants.  Three top choices: short sleeve, long sleeve, sweater.  Clothes that look like they fit.  Clothes that make children look like children.  No glitter.  No graphics.  No fringe.  No rips.  Done.

I am sure that parents still need to buy other clothing for their uniformed kids.  Those kids probably get home from school and can't change into regular clothes fast enough.  Taking non-school times into account, I would still have to find decent clothing for my kids and I suppose that means there would not be any savings.

I really considered the idea anyway.  I like the look of school uniforms.  Could I let them "express" themselves on the weekends and wear a uniform Monday through Friday?  Of course, that might be a problem for church.  Ah, they're too old for it now anyway.  I might have been able to pull this off if I had thought of it years ago but now they'd just know that I'd lost my mind.  It was a fun thought while it lasted. 

It took all day and too many stores to name but I managed to sift through the junk and buy reasonably priced, age-appropriate, non-punk, non-whorish wardrobes for all three children. Today we buy shoes.