Save Paper Costs by Shrinking Prints

Want to cut up to half your paper and ink budget? Just use half as much paper. Yeah, it sounds like the punchline to a sad joke--I won't quit my day job--but this simple tip can work.

You'll print two pages of a document to a single sheet of paper. This technique is perfect for items that require a physical paper trail that you're not likely to look at deeply later. But even websites, email, and other documents can remain legible at half their size. Here's how to shrink prints and your office supply costs.

Open the Printers and Faxes control panel, click your printer, and choose Printing Preferences. In the Layout tab, set Pages Per Sheet to 2. Click Apply and close the window. You've just made a master preference change; all new prints will default to two-per-page.

You can still override that setting when you choose to print a specific document. After picking the print command, click Properties. Again, change the setting within the Layout tab. This is great method to temporarily set a document back to standard print size.

Zack Stern is a freelance writer and editor based in San Francisco.