In the Land of Homeschooling Charter Supplies… Consumable or Non-Consumable, that is the Question!

What in the world is consumable? For those that are new here, hello there! I am Raquel Cusi, I am a mom of 5 kids and have been homeschooling since 2014. My kids have been enrolled in an independent study charter school (public school) since 2016. So in about 10 years time, I have accumulated a TON of homeschooling supplies ranging from board games and puzzles (over 1,000), hundreds of books, art supplies, education equipment, etc. It would truly be a nightmare to inventory all of these items (currently it’s 36 pages which I think is actually missing a ton of items), which brings up the question: What is consumable and non-consumable and what does it all mean?

Simply put: consumable means that an item is meant to be used by only one student, and isn’t mean to be recycled or repurposed for future students (which there are exceptions to that rule, for sure).

Non-Consumable means that the item can be used by multiple students and items in this category must be returned to the school if a family decides to disenroll from the school they acquired the item from. Think printers, board games, textbooks (not to be confused with workbooks that are written in).

Over the years, many different items have yo-yoed back and forth from non-consumable to consumable and vice versa. As a mom who has been hearing hundreds of stories over the years, good rule of thumb is to ask yourself: “Can this be used again by another student in its current state?” If the answer is yes, it is non-consumable and should be returned to the school. If no, then it is probably yours to keep!

Like I mentioned above, there are definitely exceptions to the rule. I have LEGO sets that have been played with for 10 years (think Engineering types), and I can guarantee that maybe only half of the pieces could be found in a decent amount of time. I wouldn’t expect my charter to ask for these back or charge, but if there was a possibility, I would respectfully request a depreciation assessment.

Is there anything you’d add to this post? I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out via the Contact Form!