I dearly love sites like coupons dot com and redplum dot com for printing up my online coupons. (Although I usually print the ones through Swagbucks for even more incentive, but that's another post...) You can't beat the convenience of printing up your own coupons, but there's just one tiny issue -- all that ink and paper you'll be using! It adds up! So what do you do to keep your paper and ink budget in check while still getting all those great coupons? For myself, I refill my own ink containers. I use theLog In refill kits, and if you do it right, it's easy to refill your ink and not messy at all. No harmful effects have come to our printer either, in spite of the dire warnings by HP! Paper is a bit trickier. Staples has incentives from time to time, rebates and "buy $25 get $5 off" coupons in the Sunday paper, so I use those when they come along. What do you think? Do any of you have better ideas for saving on paper and ink?
If you only printing coupons then I would suggest buy less of quality paper grade for that purpose. After all, you will print them, cut them, and give them to the store anyway. I just get my paper at Walmart, the mid-grade one, for such purpose, and buy a higher quality paper for when the kids have to print out their resume or cover letter or anything special.
Have you ever tried recycling your paper by reusing sheets that only have been used on one side? I usually keep scrap paper in the printer all the time, and only put in brand new paper when I need to print something important. School flyers, things that printed wrong, etc - the used paper really adds up once you start saving it for this purpose. I almost never run out of scrap paper, and when I do have to use a new sheet, I feel kind of bad!
The ink usually costs more than the paper. To save ink, make sure when you print, pull up the advanced options or whatever, and set your print quality of 'draft'. Make sure it is not on 'best', because printing something on 'best quality' uses more ink. I know this because I worked in copying and printing for almost 8 years. I would also try to print more than one per sheet if you have the option. Also, look for direct to card type of coupons. Some coupons can be loaded directly to their loyalty cards. Sometimes grocery store websites do this, and I have seen it on coupon sites.
