<p>The prices, that is! My s1 is a rising senior. Not leaving for college for at least a year. But I can’t resist buying stuff for his dorm room when I find prices that are 60 - 80% off (not to mention what I have found with my relentless thrift store shopping)! My husband just smacks his head and rolls his eyes (he honestly thinks it’s too soon to start all of this. Silly man.), but he’ll be thanking me next year when everything is already bought at a fraction of the price!</p>
<p>definitely something I would do…if my daughter wasn’t picky about everything she would want; given this is for a boy, go right ahead…btw, where r u finding all this stuff at 60-80% off already?</p>
<p>You may have shopping issues. You can see someone for that, you know</p>
<p>rodney, at a Kohl’s in Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>I say go for it! </p>
<p>The economy certainly needs some stimulation and it sounds like you can provide it singlehandedly! Consider it community service!</p>
<p>Storing all that stuff for a year doesn’t seem very practical.</p>
<p>What I don’t miss about living in California … no basement!</p>
<p>My son who is NOT a shopper couldn’t resist the bargains at Kohl’s. He told me that he was going to buy posters for his room and came back with a butterfly chair, shirts, and shoes–all at 70% off.</p>
<p>Apparently, bathrobes for men sold out early around here, so if you see one you like at a good price, snag it!</p>
<p>Something you might want to consider: Our oldest went to college halfway across the country. It was cheaper to fly him to college than to drive him, and we ended up buying stuff online and having it delivered to his dorm, versus paying to have stuff shipped to him at college. These bargains might not be so cheap if you have to pay to ship them to your S thousands of miles away.</p>
<p>Only it won’t be so cheap if you end up impulse-buying a lot of stuff he doesn’t need. Knowing what I do now, personally I wouldn’t be too keen to snap up dorm stuff ahead of time – especially for a guy. Sheets, a towel, and a mattress pad, maybe. Most everything else, I think I’d wait to find out where he’s going and what’s in the dorms first. Before he got in to see the furniture, we spent $60 on a nifty over-the-bed rack/shelf thing that turned out to be unusable because the beds are lofted by default.</p>
<p>Plus, a lot of stuff that’s packaged and sold as “dorm stuff” just isn’t necessary. You’d be amazed at what my son left behind this year as compared with the last.</p>
<p>^^^butterfly chair is one that could sit in your basement because it just doesn’t fit in a dorm.</p>
<p>The prices are good at Kohl’s right now. My S needed all new clothes. We hadn’t bought him much his senior year of high school and he lost weight so needed smaller clothes. Also, H needed business casual shirts. I am not a shopper, but I could have easily bought a lot more, the prices were so good.</p>
<p>I am glad you are posting here to share your enthusiasm – but you might want to really, really tone down the message at home. It could happen that the student “hears”</p>
<p>1) “I can’t wait to get rid of you.”
2) “You have to go to college next fall – don’t bother me with asking about a gap year or other choices”
3) “Going to college is a shark feeding frenzy and the blood in the water starts now.”</p>
<p>I very much hope you will give the kid some solid words of love and “own” the shopping frenzy, as in “you know, you might decide to join the Coast Guard and then your mom is sure going to feel funny with all this stuff. But I sure am having fun shopping. No matter what, I’ll be ready to give some great gifts come graduation next spring!”</p>
<p>I think I would be sad if my parents were trying to pack me up a year before I had to leave. :-(</p>
<p>Shopping early for bedding and storage items really saved us a lot of $$ (DD had decided on her “dream” color scheme early on - I know this is just crazy talk to the parents of boys!). Things like furniture/appliances were picked up once the future roommates had talked and split up their “items to share” list (the room assignment were announced in March - still early enough to get some bargains, just not as great of savings as first pass). I made the rule that everything had to fit into our crossover SUV, so that kept impulse shopping to a minumum.</p>
<p>Neither family had to shop for much once on campus, so we must have done a decent job. </p>
<p>FYI, DD knew where she was going 2 months into sr. yr., and knew which dorm she would be housed in (coach selects the dorm for the team). Campus is within a 6 hour drive, not easy to fly to, so we knew we would be transporting everything by car. We also have a better selection of stores here at home than are available near campus. </p>
<p>I agree that early bargain shopping would not work for a cross country drop off, but I think a much larger perentage of kids are driven to school than fly and have more opportunity to take advantage of great sales.</p>
<p>Folks, please don’t misunderstand me, or my intentions behind this thread. I am not trying to pack my son up early, nor am I trying to imply to him that I can’t wait till he leaves. And it’s not like I have a garage full of stuff that will never fit in his dorm. I simply have found a few things at great prices and couldn’t pass up the bargain, and he is pleased with the things I have gotten him. If he chooses to go to the Coast Guard, great. If he takes a gap year, then it will all be waiting for him when he decides to go to college. And as far as the impracticality of storing things for a year, I think it’s way more impractical to wait until the last minute and pay some jacked-up price.</p>
<p>Geez, this thread was supposed to be fun. Thank you to the people that decided to take it that way.</p>
<p>I purchased some bedding last year at some crazy discount. I figured either my son would like it to take to college the next year or I’d donate it. He loves it. Hooray! I lined the bottom of our suitcases with it…so it was no problem to transport either.</p>
<p>Want to add that my son certainly did not see it as we couldn’t wait for him to leave. We had to talk the boy into doing his senior year instead of finishing high school in three years. He’s been ready to go since he was, oh, five years old!</p>
<p>Well for what its worth, I appreciated your post. I’m a planner and love a great bargain, and to me this is no more sending the message you are pushing them out the door than going on CC and researching colleges or nagging kids about grades a few years in advance. I am SURE your son already knows what an out of season bargain hunter you are and it does not have some ‘deeper’ message. Oy.</p>
<p>mdye- I certainly get it. We started buying for my daughter’s first places while they were in high school. They enjoyed the planning and searching as much as I did!</p>