Day 141 - The Paper Chase

Buying Recycled Copy Paper

I don't go through a ton of copy paper at home. The only items I print out are shipping labels, VMS orders, mapquest directions and my grocery list form that I made in excel which has rows of categorical headers in the same order as they are found in the aisles at Kroger's. Yeah, that's an actual image of it right there - I like to take my geekness to the next level.

Jealous much?

Anyhow, I may not use a lot of paper, but from now on I'm going to make sure that anything I do print out, is printed on recycled paper. Every office supply store these days carries a wide selection of enviro-friendly paper options. Staples offers three different products including Earth Choice, which is FSC Certified, as well as a generic 30% Recycled Content and a 100% Recycled Content paper. The generic recycled paper also has the advantage of being processed without any chlorine or chlorine compounds. Double Bonus!

So from henceforth, rather than ask hubby to grab a ream of any old paper on his way home, I'll be trundling off to Staples myself to buy 100% Recycled Copy Paper.

Savings:

I'm really raising the bar here, from 0% recycled to 100% recycled. It costs a bit more ($6.49 per ream compared with $4.49 for no recycled content), but it's worth it to me. Now if I could convince hubby to make the switch at his office -- that would really be something!

Difficulty Level: 1 out of 5

Not much extra work, considering I only buy a ream every couple of months. The extra $2.00 hurts, but only because it forces me to listen to hubby's old "going green costs a lot of green" argument.

Day 137 - Not the Sharpest Tool In the Shed

Sharpening My Scissors, Instead of Buying New Ones

For those of you who don't know, I work from home, sewing renaissance garb for my sister's online store, The Very Merry Seamstress (shameless commerce plug - feel free to violate your compact and go buy stuff now, please). Anyhow, my busy season for VMS runs from March through October - the prime season for faires, weddings and Halloween parties.

During my slow months, I like to go through all my equipment and make sure I have everything I need and that it's all in good repair. I usually end up buying new scissors at this time, because worn, dull scissors are a seamstress's worst enemy. It's like an accountant having an adding machine with no "7" - not only will it slow you down, but odds are, it'll also make you f' a few things up. And since they're a relatively inexpensive business expense, it's always seemed easier to just buy new.

This year, however, I will be taking my shears over to Hancock Fabric and dropping them off for the guy who comes in and sharpens the scissors. He stops by once a month and sets up shop right in the middle of the store, where he spends the entire day honing and filing cutting tools for the old, the cheap, and the eco-friendly. Oh look -- I fall into all three categories now! :-)

Savings:

One pair of scissors and the packaging and shipping associated with buying new. Oh, and $12 - the cost difference between buying and sharpening.

Difficulty Level: 1 out of 5

I'll have to call the store to find out what day Mr. Sharpie will be there but that's the only additional step required. All in all, another very easy change to make.

Day Eighty-Seven - Margin of Error

Reducing the Size of My Print Margins

For those of you who don't know, I sew for a living. OK, it's not actually "for a living" per se, but "for helping make ends meet", at least. I started about four years ago when my extremely talented sister, Heather, needed help keeping up with the orders for her custom Renaissance Garb [shameless commerce plug]. It's rewarding work that allows me the freedom to set my own hours and stay home with my children. However, like any home-based business, it comes with its own set of eco-challenges.

One of those challenges is printing. Every order I receive comes to me via email and contains the customer's shipping information, the garments ordered, TONS of body measurements (these are custom gowns, after all) and special instructions. It's a pretty lengthy email and I need ALL that information right in front of me while cutting, sewing and finishing the order. I can't keep my laptop in my sewing room, though, because all the lint and fibers that float around the room would get sucked into the computer and kill it in about 10 nanoseconds. So I have no choice but to print these orders out.

These forms are always two pages long and my printer doesn't do double-sided copies. But today I wiped my schedule clean and took THREE MINUTES to figure out how to tell Outlook to print the order forms on one page. It was super easy. I opened up one of the email forms, clicked FILE... PAGE SETUP... MEMO STYLE. I was then able to change font sizes, margins, orientation, and page size until I got the whole order form to fit on one sheet of paper. This doesn't affect any of my other programs (word docs, IE, etc.) so I didn't have to worry about printing out mapquest maps and not being able to read them. SUPER SCORE!

Savings:

In the past twelve months, I have received 213 orders which resulted in the use of 426 sheets of paper. I have been seeing an increase in orders of approximately 15% each year and assume the trend will continue. So, I believe that in the next twelve months, this simple five-minute change will result in a savings of 234 sheets of paper. If the other 3.5 million American-women-owned, home-based businesses average the same amount of printing I do, together we could save 1.6 million REAMS of paper by making this one easy change. That's a lot of happy little trees.

Difficulty Level: 1 out of 5

Super easy. If you want to do this and run into trouble, email me and I'll be happy to help! :-)