Sometimes it’s the little things which really add up without you noticing, right under your nose. While you’re working out how to arrange Direct Debit for your small business or planning your next big pitch, your office stationary situation could be unnecessarily eating into your office overheads. If this is the case, we’ve come up with five smart ways to cut down on the cost of office “staples” like ink and paper…
1. Switch to Garamond
According to a young, budding scientist from Pittsburg, the US Government could save itself a cool $370 million per annum. 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani conducted an impressively thorough study into the amount of ink each commonly used font requires and concluded that switching to Garamond (size 12) could save you 23% on printing costs. Pretty impressive, no? Tell your team to leave off the comic sans and make the switch to save on ink.
2. Buy “compatible” cartridges
Ink cartridges from your printer manufacturer are going to cost you. Instead go for the “own brands” of the ink cartridge world and look for cheaper off-brand cartridges which are suitable for your printer. They’ll work just as well and save you plenty. Remember, refilling cartridges is far cheaper than buying new ones!
3. Have a “stationary freeze”
Your employees are a resourceful bunch, they just don’t know it yet. Pick a month and announce a stationary freeze. This will force your team to be more economical and really think about how much paper they use and pens they accidentally lose in the bottom of laptop bags. A month of scrimping and saving supplies can encourage more economical behavior in future.
4. Start a “scrap stack”
It’s easy to take paper for granted but buying in reams of the stuff gets very expensive very quickly. Instead of chucking old printouts straight in the recycling bin, instigate a scrap stack for used paper which is perfectly good for jotting down ideas and notes.
5. No more post-its
They may clutter up offices, desks and PC monitors everywhere, but post-its are a big waste of your stationary budget and they’re incredibly wasteful from an environmental perspective. Swap post-its for scrap paper or even a handy post-it app for PCs and mobile devices like PopNotes.
Do you have any cunning tricks you use to keep your office overheads to a minimum? How do you spend less on stationary? Share your ideas with our readers below.
