I’m a mum of 12 & sick of seeing Christmas stuff in B&M – it’s unfair to families who can’t afford it, it’s only August
A MUM-OF-12 has been left frustrated after seeing Christmas stock in B&M already – because it’s too early to spend money on presents.
Zoe Sullivan, 44, and husband Ben live in a six-bedroom house with their bumper brood in Burghead, Moray.
The YouTube family regularly share vlogs, hints and tips for everyday life on their channel.
In a recent video on YouTube, mum Zoe revealed she’d nipped into bargain store B&M for a “couple of things”.
The supermum picked up pieces for son Joseph’s upcoming fifth birthday – bagging Spiderman games and toys in a festive two-for-£24 offers.
But she joked: “As always happens in B&M we came out with a lot of stuff that we didn’t go in for.”
So she also came away with a stash of cleaning items, snacks and storage boxes for the family’s new home.
And while she was happy with her haul, she was not impressed to see Christmas items in store already.
B&M and Home Bargains have both divided shoppers over the past few weeks after stocking their shelves with festive decorations and gifts.
Some savvy customers have enjoyed having more time to pick up bargains and spread the costs further.
But with summer not yet over and four months still to go until December 25, others feel it’s just too early.
And Zoe is firmly in the too early camp, revealing she’s just got over the cost of kitting the kids out for a return to school – with little cash spare to start thinking about Christmas.
“It gets earlier and earlier and earlier every year”, she said.
“You have to be early because by the time Christmas comes B&M is is cleared out, there’s nothing left.
“So you have to kind of get it early which isn’t always possible.”
She added: “I know going back a few years for us we couldn’t really get the stuff early because we didn’t have the money until much closer to Christmas
“So you end up missing out because they bring the stuff in so early now.
“And that’s a little bit annoying because you can’t always afford the stuff back in August, especially when you’ve just spent however much getting the kids back to school.
“We do kind of start thinking about Christmas as soon as they’ve gone back to school it’s not always affordable to be able to do it as soon as they’ve gone back to school.
“So it’s a little bit, it is really early.”
The Sullivans are one of the country’s biggest families, with Elisabeth, 17, Olivia, 16, Noah, 13, Evangeline, 11, Tobias, 10, Agnes, six, Joseph, four, baby Flo, one, and two sets of twins – Charlotte and Isabelle, 15, and Leah and Erin, seven.
And they have FOUR children who all celebrate their birthdays on the same date.
Both sets of the Sullivan twins – Charlotte and Isabelle, and Leah and Erin – were born on January 25.
Zoe joked: “We like to keep ourselves extra busy and supersize everything.”