School Sales

There was an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Sunday about how much people hate schools selling stuff.  Me too -- and yet I have put a magazine link here because our little music department needs the money and not every parent has enough to just fork over cash.  I prefer that idea.  I think that those who can should just write a check and be done with it.  Otherwise we are just buying things we don't really need or want. That's not really fair, though, because then those who can't afford to write a check or buy the stuff themselves still have to hit the streets peddling magazines.

Of all the sales we've had to do for school, magazines are the least painful.  You just collect and that's the end of it.  The magazines get sent directly to the buyer's home.  I understand there's a Papa Murphy's pizza sale for the preschool later in the year.  I love Papa Murphy's pizza as much as the next gal, but those pizzas are fresh and have to be picked up and delivered in a timely manner.  There's no keeping them in the trunk until you run into the person you sold them to.

I used to buy a Christmas wreath from a highly organized Boy Scout.  The year he grew up and moved away, I put a plea on Facebook for a scout seller and got a phone call from a scout father who seemed angry I wanted to buy one.  He practically threw it on my doorstep.  I think it had been in his trunk for several days because it was near death when I got it.  The next year I bought one at a store.  Didn't feel nearly as good, but I didn't have to deal with a parent who felt like he was doing me a favor.

Another sale I don't enjoy is wrapping paper.  I'm sure you have a room devoted to the creative wrapping of gifts, but I don't.  I usually buy a gift bag at the same time I buy the gift, or I go to the basement and find one of the many hundreds of gift bags I got when Colin was born.  True they are mostly blue and have a baby or Noah's ark on them, but if you put a lot of colorful tissue paper in it sort of masks the bag and the recipient gets all excited to dig in and see what the gift is.

Beware, though, this year your gift might be a fresh pizza.