Looking over a shopping cart full of brightly colored notebooks and child-friendly scissors, Judy Adams couldn’t believe how much shopping for school supplies has changed over the years.

Adams, the grandmother of four Adams County Christian School students, was in Walmart Friday clutching a handful of school supply lists she printed from the Internet.

“It wasn’t always like this,” she said. “It used to be very simple.”

Even Christy Biddle, who finished school in 1995, remembers simpler school supply shopping lists.

Now, the lists include things like “72 sharpened pencils.”

“I don’t remember having long lists like this,” Biddle said.

“When I was going we had to have 6-8 pencils. Now, they have to be sharpened before you get there, I don’t remember that.”

Simplicity in before-school preparation was what Corrine Cotten, who hasn’t been a school child for more than 50 years, remembered from her school days as she shopped with her grandson, Devyn Sandidge.

“Very little is the same — it didn’t take as much as it does today,” Cotten said.

Her school supply shopping consisted of getting a single piece of paper and a pencil to take to school for the first day, Cotten said.

“You walked into school, and if you needed anything you wrote it down and got it later,” she said.

Adams’ youngest child is now 31, and when she got his supplies for school it was a very simple affair, she said.

“You got some pens and some paper and a few other things, and that was it,” she said. “You were done, and you spent maybe $15. That was for both of my kids.”

Looking over the basket, Adams estimated getting everything on Friday’s list would be much more.

“This is going to be at least $60,” she said. “And for some people that’s not easy.”

Elnora Patrick, whose four children are entering Ferriday Lower and Upper Elementary schools this year, noticed just how much the supplies were adding up.

“It’s expensive,” she said.

And then there are supplies that just weren’t on her radar when Patrick was in school.

“I didn’t have to buy uniforms,” she said.

In addition to the cost of the supplies, Adams and other shoppers on the school supply aisle are busy talking about the specificity teachers demand on their shopping lists.

“This says the teacher wants a certain brand of markers,” Adams said pointing to the list. “What happened to just regular colored markers?”

And as Adams worked to cross every last item off of her list, some shoppers don’t need a list — they have word-of-mouth.

LaShonda Thomas, a 17-year-old Jefferson County High School student, said going into her senior year she just asked older students what she would need for the upcoming year.

“We don’t get a list until we get to school,” she said. “But I have a pretty good idea of what I need.”

And Thomas, unlike most students, has been working to get what she needs for school.

Thomas is responsible for buying her own school supplies and earns most of her money babysitting.

And like Adams, Thomas said getting all the necessary supplies for school is expensive.

“This is a time when a lot of people don’t have a lot of money,” Thomas said. “And making sure you have everything you need isn’t easy. But you have to have it.”

School starts for Natchez public schools Wednesday.

The first day of school for Concordia Parish public schools is Aug. 10.