As long as I can remember, I have loved back-to-school shopping.

I enjoyed prowling the aisles each year, searching for the perfect colors and patterns on folders and binders. A brand-new pack of pens was enough to delight me (and, I’ll admit, still is). I relished getting new rulers, compasses and protractors, even though math and I weren’t friends for much of my schooling. The blank sheets of paper in notebooks and composition books set my heart aflutter.

My obsession with new school supplies didn’t wane when I went to college, or even graduate school. The beginning of each semester wasn’t complete without a planner from the college bookstore and the due dates of every research paper meticulously recorded.

Clothes shopping? That was another story. Even when I was a teenager, my mother had to drag me up and down the aisles and practically force me into the fitting rooms to try things on what was then an awkwardly lanky frame.

Of course, back then Virginia did not have the sales tax holiday on school supplies and clothing that it now has at the beginning of every August.

Even though I’ve been out of any type of formal education for six years now, I still have found the chance to take advantage of the tax holiday these past few years.

Clothes don’t have to be worn to school to be tax-free come this weekend, so I plan on hitting the stores and stocking up on clothes to wear to the office. Last year, I got a new pair of shoes that kick-started my new hobby of running. In other past years, I have stocked up on school supplies to send in my Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes.

Whatever your position on tax holidays, or the sales tax in general, it’s a smart idea to take advantage of the tax-free items this weekend, whether you have kids or not. At the very least, it’s a good excuse for clotheshorses to do some shopping.