- Epson EcoTank Printer
I have wasted so much money on ink in the past nine years that I feel kind of sick when I think about it. I think I had three home school printers before switching to the Epson Eco Tank and I could just cry for those wasted years.
Here’s the thing. All those printer companies have the same exact marketing plan. They sell you a super cheap printer to lure you in and then they SLAM you with ink prices so high it leaves you stunned. And as your printer gets older and they move on to newer cartridges, they up the prices even more on the older ones. Sigh. It’s just not cool.
But whenever I was faced with needing a new printer, I would look at the options and choose the cheapest one that had the features I needed. My last one was an HP model. I did like that I could buy the XL cartridges but at the same time, I was left saying, “Hold up, I have to pay MORE for the XL cartridge that is the same exact size as the other one, it just has more ink in it?!? WHY ARE THEY NOT FILLING ALL THE CARTRIDGES ALL THE WAY? Why do I have to pay MORE to get the ink cartridge full?!?” What a scam!!! But HP sells their actual printers cheap enough to keep people falling into the trap, over and over again. And not only that, but even the XL cartridges would last me MAYBE 50 pages of color printing and maybe 150-200 or so black and white pages. I print A LOT. Obviously. It’s what home school moms DO, right?
Then I learned that Epson has decided to take another path. They are selling their machines for more money up front and their ink is dirt cheap. They don’t use cartridges, mommas! Take that in. They do not use cartridges. You buy giant bottles of ink and you pour it into the ink tank. There’s one for each of the four needed colors. And there’s more ink in the bottles than what you will use to fill the tank, which means you have back up for when your ink levels get low before you need to buy more.
I have been using my first bottles of ink since February and this is the time of year when I print and print and print and print. Judging by how much paper I’ve gone through, I’d guess I’ve printed 750 to 1000 black and white pages and my black ink level has only dropped to about 3/4 full. I no longer dread printing in color. I’ve probably printed 30 or so color pages and my color ink levels have barely moved.
Yes it costs more up front but here’s the break down I’ve come up with:
An HP all in one printer costs about $60 and comes with the first round of cartridges. A replacement black HP cartridge is $29 and color is $33. If you go with a company that refills recycled cartridges, you can get one of each fro about $35. They claim to last 300 pages but I think that is pushing it, personally.
An Epson EcoTank costs about $200 for a basic model but you can upgrade to higher end business models (home school moms are probably ok with just the basic one!). When the included ink finally runs out, it will cost you $19 for a new bottle of black and $39 for the three color bottles (for the whole package, not per color). Epson claims that one set of bottles will last two years. Now, for home school mommas, I have my doubts. They’ve never seen the way we print! But even so, I have printed at least 750 pages now and only used 1/4 of the tank, which was not even an entire bottle of ink. So it’s going to be a long time before you need ink.
And yes, you can save even more by buying off brand ink, however, the Epson bottles are designed to fit the tanks perfectly to avoid spills AND to make sure you don’t put the wrong color into the wrong tank–each has its own shape to keep you from making a mess. So I’m sticking with Epson but that’s up to you.
I will say that the color printing quality isn’t that great but I think I have a setting wrong and I haven’t had time to mess around with it. This is not a photo printer.
Overall, I can’t recommend this printer enough. I finally don’t have to stress when I’m printing workbooks and other important items for our school year. I’m not running out of ink any time soon!
2. Laminator
I used to think laminating would be too expensive. Friends, I am not joking, I used to buy clear contact paper and try to “laminate” with it. Not only was it a waste of time, it really wasn’t that cheap AND the results were pretty cruddy.
I really wanted a laminator but I’d go to Walmart or Target and see that 25 laminating pouches cost about $20 and it just didn’t seem worthwhile.
But times have changed and you can get laminating pouches online for cheap. You can search Amazon and find as many as 300 pouches for $20. That’s a huge difference.
And laminating machines? They aren’t so pricey either. My last Scotch brand laminator lasted me nine years before it finally started making weird noises. I’m about to replace it with this one. Just remember, you don’t have to use Scotch brand pouches with it–I literally never have.
3. A Binding Machine
I tend to buy my curriculum as downloadable PDF files. That way if I like it, I can reuse it for the next kid without re-purchasing anything. Makes sense, right? But that means I have piles and piles of printed paper everywhere. And I used my trusty old three hole punch and put it all in binders. Binders and binders and binders.
Here’s the thing. Binders take up a lot of space. Even if you only have 50 pages in one and 150 in another, you probably stick both in 1″ binders, taking up 2″ of space on your shelf. I have a very small house and we don’t have a dedicated school room. I need every fraction of an inch I can get! PLUS, binders aren’t exactly free. I try to buy them when they are cheap at back to school sales, but really, I’ve bought hundreds of those suckers in the past nine years. Sometimes the cheap ones. Sometimes the fancy ones. They all break eventually. They wear out, they stop closing properly, the covers warp. I have an entire shelf in my school supply closet at the moment with empty binders sitting on it in various states of wear.
I started to see some fellow home school moms buying their own binding machines and it basically turned my world upside down. I was like, “Hold up. What? YOU BIND YOUR OWN BOOKS? YOU ARE A HOME SCHOOL GODDESS!” Hahaha. And after weighing the cost and the benefits carefully, I bought one myself.
I literally did NOTHING else for en entire week but bind all my piles of papers, all my binders of curriculum, even some totally random crap into neat little books. It’s been life changing. And really, pretty cheap when you think about it.
I bought this one that uses comb bindings but you could also get one that does spiral binding like this.
The combs come in different sizes. Mine came with 100 of the smaller combs which can hold about 40 pages at best. I bought larger ones because I knew I would need them! You can get all different sizes and it costs about $10 for a 100 pack. You can’t buy 100 1″ binders for $10! And these take up far less space since they expand to the size of the stack of paper. I suspect this machine will save me a lot of money over the next twelve years of home schooling I have ahead of me.
If you are a fan of The Office, you may remember a scene where Jim talks about there being nothing he can’t diaper. Now I feel that way about binding. There is nothing I can’t bind into a book. Hahahah!
Overall, I really regret not having these three pieces of equipment from day one–but I am so glad I have them now. So much less frustration, wasted time, wasted money, and wasted space. Trust me, mommas, you need these tools in your home school!