7 Tips for the Frugal Home Office
With more individuals running their own businesses or telecommuting, the home office has become indispensable. Applying your existing frugality skills to home office creation and maintenance allows you to work from home without breaking the bank.
Not sure how to run a frugal home office? Try these suggestions.
Reuse Paper
Like many people, however, I find I can’t quite give up paper. Working with a small, refurbished monitor, I have limited screen space. Print outs mean I’m not constantly rearranging my screen so I can read five documents at once.
If you do print, at least reuse paper. I have a pile of old printouts by my desk, for taking notes and folding. You can also reuse paper in the printer, printing on the clear side.
My kids use scrap paper for homework, and I grab sheets to make grocery lists. Just be sure sensitive documents don’t get used by accident. When I was writing on people’s experiences at inpatient alcohol rehabs some very personal stories crossed my desk. I made sure those hit the shredder — not the scrap pile.
Set Your Printer to B&W
Use Free Online Backups
Shop Secondhand
I do have one hard rule for trading post purchases — no electronics. A frugal shopper can quickly evaluate the condition of an office desk. Evaluating the state of a laptop or CPU is much more difficult.
For electronics, I stick to refurbished items sold from reputable stores. Prices are reasonable, and most stores include 90-day warranty on refurbished devices.
Remember as well computers and laptops are modular devices. If your hard drive dies, you don’t need to replace the entire computer. Buy a refurbished hard drive and learn how to swap it into your device.
Use Open Source Software
Image courtesy of bplanet / FreeDigitalPhotos.net