Melissa’s Advice Corner - Entry #2: Saving Money In the Office

My official title here at On the Leesh Productions is “Manager of Operations and Productions/Associate Producer.” This means that among my many duties here at OTL it is my responsibility to keep the office fully stocked with whatever we need, be it office supplies or technical equipment. Since we are still living in an economic crunch here are a few ways that I have found to save big on things for your business or home office:

1. Sign up for rewards programs for places like Best Buy and Staples. We often need new technical equipment and/or office supplies and I frequent these two stores most often. If you sign up for their rewards programs you build points on every dollar you spend and after you spend "x" amount of money they send you coupons in the mail for money off!

2. Recycle your old ink cartridges for money. Staples also has another program where they will let you return up to 12 old ink cartridges per month and then they will send you a coupon for money off your next purchase.

3. Look for coupons on the packaging of products. For Example: I buy a lot of bubble mailers for the office, and underneath all the outside packaging I can usually find coupons for dollars off for the next time I buy that product. So make sure to take a second to look at all the packaging to make sure you are not throwing away a $2.00 off coupon from your next bubble mailer purchase.

4. Set up a recycled paper box and print anything that is for “inner office use only” on that paper. You can save so much on paper if you get two uses out of one piece. My boss Alicia is great at doing this; anything that is not for official use is always printed on used paper.

5. Print your own address labels. Instead of buying address labels for letters, cards, mailings, etc. buy printable address labels and print them in your office and/or home. They look just as nice and cost way less then buying one’s from a printing company.

6. If your office doesn’t have a shared network storage device, purchase a Mass USB Storage device to move images, documents, and files around your office instead of burning a CD. CD’s cost money and they generate a lot of waste if you are constantly burning a CD for 1 document. Use the Mass Storage device and save on waste and having to always buy CD’s.

Well that is all for now. Tune in next month for more great advice from Melissa’s OTL Advice Corner.

Cheers,
M-