5 Ways to Print Everything and Save Money

I love printables (in case you guys haven’t noticed…) but my goodness, printing stuff is expensive.  And as much as I love saving money, I like to print in color.  But I’ve been working on ways to reduce my printing costs too, because I’m not made of gold!

1.  Wait until you need it.  For awhile I got into the habit of printing out a whole bunch of stuff at one time, organizing it, and holding onto it until I needed it.  More often than not I didn’t end up using it!  Not only did I waste money on the ink and paper, but I wasted my time getting it all organized and perfect
   By waiting until we were ready to use a page, we drastically reduced the cost (and time).  It does help to keep a list though, otherwise you may just forget about it altogether.
2. Print double sided.  Not even printed can do this, but most of the newer models are able.  On any pages that we don’t need to cut or paint, we print doubled sided.  It has saved us a lot of paper.
3. Buy Paper in Bulk.  Yes, if you buy more paper at one time, you will pay less.  Amazon has some decent deals, but a bulk store like Costco or Sam’s Club would probably be a better bet.
4. Laminate and Reuse.  If you find that you’re using similar pages a lot (handwriting pages, simple math facts, etc) just laminate the page and reuse it!  Of course, this is only worth it if you’re reusing it quite a bit.  After all, laminating isn’t all that cheap either!
5. Sign Up for an Ink Program.  All in all, this has saved me the most money.  I’ve been using UP Instant Ink for about 4 months now and I haven’t had to buy a single cartridge.  All in all, I’ve spent about $20 total.  In a typical 4 months, I’d buy at least 3 cartridges totaling $40.  Even better, I don’t have to be careful with what I print now.  I don’t have to worry about pages being black and white.  If I want a page in full color, that’s fine!

I’d like to highlight a few addition benefits of the HP Instant Ink Program because that’s what saved me from being afraid to print anything.

First, they track your ink and send you cartridges before you need them.  Surely I’m not the only one who has made an Office Depot run at the last minute because you’re out of ink.  That’s so frustrating.

Second, it costs the same for color versus black and white!  No more sacrificing color to save a buck.  There are some printables (like games) that are just better