Waterproof name label stickers are the boring purchase you'll be glad you made

I’ve learned this lesson the hard way: buy the name labels before you buy anything else. Everything else on the supply list can wait — the backpack, the lunchbox, the new shoes. Because within 48 hours of the first day of school, you’ll have a pile of identical jackets in the lost-and-found and no way to tell whose is whose. Waterproof stickers are the right call — they survive the dishwasher, the washing machine, and the general chaos of a kid’s water bottle. Slap them on everything on day one and save yourself the mid-September panic.