Shop Back-To-School Essentials Without Breaking The Bank

This is a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions, however, are my own. 

You all know by now that I'm obsessed with stationery and organization. Like I get anxiety when people don't organize their email inboxes, or delete emails after reading them instead of filing them. Why do people DO that though?! Like just drag it into a folder. Ughhh.. I guess you can say I'm a little bit Type-A, but it happens to the best of us, right?! 

So imagine how excited I was when I was contacted and asked to review my shopping experience at an Office Depot store near me - well yeah, I'd do it. Give me a reason to go stationery shopping and I'm in! 

Side note: Before going shopping, I went through my desk and re-organized my stationery to evaluate what I needed to buy, so I didn't waste valuable money, ya know?, and I actually realized I have way too many pens, and I actually have a problem. Did that stop me? Nope. 

So off I went to Office Depot - and of course I made a day out of it, hitting Nordstrom, Forever 21 and Target with my big on the way home. What can I say - I can shop.. 

I fully expected the $100 gift card to take me nowhere fast. I mean, I can blow $100 at any other stationery store in 2.5 seconds (seriously, time me..) so I figured this would be the same. I picked up everything I needed and more, just buying things cause they were cute, cause Caroline logic.

The thing is, even though it's still sophomore year, I love starting fresh every semester and I loved that Office Depot was still pretty stocked even though it was January and not August and prime back-to-school shopping time. Starting a new semester's almost as big of a deal as starting a new year. You need new notebooks, new pens and pencils, some post-its and crafting supplies, and printer paper and everything. Let me tell ya, money runs away from me in stationery stores. 

I even filmed my little shopping adventure for you to look at how adorable I am.

Funny thing is: even with all of this, my bill only came up to $65. WHAAAAT?! Turns out, Office Depot's pretty freakin affordable and I can buy a million things for $100.. no lie. I grabbed some more necessities and some things I just had to have, like an expensive iPad pen cause yolo? and I went to check out - and even then it was still under $100! Are they TRYING to fuel my stationery addiction?!? After some convincing from my Big, I spent the extra couple bucks on some cute Valentine's Day cards for friends and my roommates and her - yes, she convinced me, and we booked it out of there before I could buy anything else. 

The Office Depot I went to was pretty small, and didn't have the See Jane Work collection - I'd heard a lot about this collection. It's basically organization made cute for girls like you and me, who still care what our magazine files look like.. I'm so tempted to order everything online now. brb. shopping. 

In the end, this is what I got shopping and I'm so happy. It was really much-needed, and ugh perfection.

But, you know I'm not one to not share the goods, so I have an exclusive deal for you.
If you shop through any of the links in this post, you'll get $10 off every $50 you spend. 
Love me yet? You better!
Happy back-to-school spring semester shopping!!