They ticked all of the boxes, ie. they were pink, they came with a strawberry motif and her name was spelled right.

They were sweet but they cost a pretty penny. Then I found we had stacks more things to label than we had sweet stickers in store. My daughter outgrew her two pairs of labelled shoes by July.

The next year I invested in a labeler after my school teacher, sister-in-law forewarned me we’d need to label every single pencil and wind-up crayon once our girls started school.

This gadget has since labelled many hundreds of textas, crayons and snack containers.

Last week I mindlessly punched out 140 name labels as my husband and I were consumed by quality TV drama The Crown.

My husband never once complained about the humming-snipping-buzzing soundtrack of the label maker, wise enough to know I wouldn’t hesitate to royally relegate that role.

“Who did the back-to-school labelling in the House of Windsor?” was his only thought.

“Definitely not Philip,” I say. 

“Not The Queen either, or Margaret, or Peter Townsend who had his hands full with Margaret. The Royals’ wind-up crayons probably arrived already monogrammed, House of Windsor.”

Out shopping for stationery in Albury I noticed the English-made Derwent pencils cost three times the price of the Chinese-made Derwents. As our daughters still use some of my English-made Derwent pencils from the early 1980s, I figure you get what you pay for.

Wandering around Officeworks with the girls and their lists of school supplies, I noticed a decided lack of children in the store.

Other parents were carrying school lists – sans children – and seemingly powering through their shopping.

Not to panic, we’d push on. My youngest chose a cheap set of wind-up crayons and could not be talked round to a better quality and likely longer-lasting set. Then my eldest chose the same textas I had put with two parcels under the Kmart Wishing Tree in December.

“I just gave two sets of those to charity; I didn’t know you liked Connector pens,” I say.

“They are my favourite,” she replies.

“Good to know,” I say, “Hopefully two other children will be as happy as you.”

Having made steady progress on the school lists, we suddenly stalled with both girls fixated on Sharpies.

“Are they on your lists?” I say.

“Yes-no-but-yes I really love them!” they chorus.

With dozens of Sharpies on offer, we were completely stationary in the stationery store. Once I told them the Sharpies would have to come out of their own budgets since I’d already blown mine, the decision-making process was simple. They both chose a neon pack of five pens on special.

We rounded out the back-to-school shopping at Big W, Best and Less, Lowes and Evans Shoes.

When we arrived home I presented each of them with a pile of 70 sticker name labels.

“You have exactly one week so you might want to get stuck in!” I say.

Best wishes to the new parents sending their babies to school for the first time in 2017. Tissues and a labeler are your friends.