In a conversation with a friend today, it came up in the conversation that we rent a 3-bedroom place. (I don’t know how this hadn’t come up in the past). Almost as soon as I mentioned it, I thought to myself, “We don’t need 3-bedrooms… we could save money if we went with something a little smaller.” This lead me to reflect on why we went went for a 3-bedroom place. When I looked back on the decision it was a combination of getting a dog (who has quickly grown into a big dog) and the fact that we used our office quite often.

What has changed? Well our dog hasn’t shrunk. It turns out that we use our office less. Why? There are at least four reasons:

1. We use less paper than we have in the past – We aren’t completely paperless… truthfully we aren’t even close. However, we deal with less paper than we did 3 years ago.
2. Our office is further away – It’s a bit of a winding staircase to get to our office. I’m not going to play the Lazy card here, but the dining room table can serve as a desk and its closer.
3. Laptops are our friends – In the past we’d trek up to the office (okay, I’m playing the lazy card now) to use the desktop. However, a laptop is small and convenient enough that it can do 99% of what we need… no office trip required.

I’ve known for some time that going paperless has its advantages. It’s environmentally friendly. It is easy to backup your your data remotely. You don’t have to physically store the paper. However, I never thought that saving the need for a whole room (and the associated the money savings) is perhaps the biggest reason to go paperless.

Looking for more tips on saving money on printer ink. Here are:

Seven ways to reduce the cost of running a printer

Whether in a home or office environment, running a printer can become an expensive affair. With ink, paper and supplies more expensive than ever before, those who do a lot of printing often find themselves spending a fortune over a year’s time. Fortunately, it’s possible to reduce the cost of printing without having to make any major changes, so long as you are aware of a few key tips.

1. Print Double-Sided – Most people don’t set their printers to print double-sided, simply because they aren’t aware that this is an option. The fact is, there are plenty of documents that get printed throughout the day that are used solely for reference and will never go out to a client. For documents like these, consider printing them double-sided. Not only will you reduce the workload of your printer, you’ll cut back immensely on paper waste, which can help to save costs.
2. Reduce The Amount of Handouts – One of the biggest caveats of running an office is having to print an immense amount of handouts for employees, such as production schedules, memos and otherwise. Instead of handouts, stick to emailing your employees the information they need. Email is far less wasteful, is usually more organized and will help to save on printing costs in the long run.
3. Shrink Your Documents – Sometimes documents get printed out far larger than they need to, which inevitably results in utilizing more ink and paper than necessary. By utilizing the “shrink to fit” feature in print-preview, you can drastically cut down on how much paper and ink you use when printing documents. After all, there’s no need to use five sheets of paper when you can use just two or three.
4. Print Only the Important Segments – Many people print out entire pages worth of text when all they truly need is a small block. Instead of wasting the extra ink and paper, copy the segment that you need, past it into a simple document and print it out. This will not only help to save costs, but will also help to streamline your organizational skills.
5. Refill your Ink Cartridges – One of the biggest costs associated with printing is ink; especially in an office environment. Some office blow through ink incredibly fast, only to purchase new cartridges like they’re going out of style. Instead of buying a new cartridge every time, consider refilling your own ink cartridges. Not only is the process incredibly easy, but you can literally cut your yearly printing costs in half by doing so. There are many kits and instructional tutorials that can be purchased that will show you exactly which steps to take to ensure you’re doing the job right. A properly refilled ink cartridge is just as useful and efficient as one that is brand new.
6. Don’t Print Everything in Color – It seems like in offices these days just about everyone prints their documents in full color. Most of the documents you print out during a day will be used for textual reference, and color is usually not a necessary part of the equation. If you can get away with printing in greyscale rather than using color every time, you will inevitably save quite a bit of ink.
7. Combine Sheets into One Page – People will often print something out, only to find that it takes up just a corner of a printed sheet. Instead of working in this way, combine multiple images or text blocks into one document. You’ll be printing the same amount of information, while utilizing far less paper in the process.

Printing is no doubt expensive, and has caused many an office to have to readjust their budgets year after year. So long as you follow the advice above, however, you can drastically cut down on your printing costs each year.