When financial times get tough, many people often choose to save money by refilling their printer ink cartridges instead of buying a new printer cartridge. There are many kits that can be bought to refill a cartridge at home. Although there are many benefits of refilling the ink cartridge, it can also cause quite a mess. Is refilling an ink cartridge really worth the fuss? If you use special tips to avoid making the mess, than the answer is yes.

Pros of Refilling
If you go through multiple printer ink cartridges a year, it can be easy for you to save money by refilling an empty ink cartridge yourself. By doing this, you will no longer have to pay for the whole ink cartridge, saving you, on average, 70 percent of what you would have paid to do so. Not only will this save you money, but refilling the ink cartridge is great for the environment as well. Printer cartridges are made up of materials that don’t decay, so they sit in landfills taking up space. It’s just another reason to feel good about doing it yourself.

Cons of Refilling
Although there are many benefits to refilling printer ink, there are also some downsides to doing it yourself. It is very common to make a mess when you first begin refilling a printer cartridge. The spilled ink can stain tables, clothing and skin. Luckily, there are many tips you can use to avoid and clean up the mess.

Avoiding the Mess
One reason people are often discouraged from refilling ink cartridges is because you can easily make a huge mess. However, there are many tips that can be used to make the process easy and almost fool-proof, minimizing the mess. It is important to remember practice makes perfect. — the more times you refill the ink, the more practice you will receive. This means the mess will decrease with each refill to the point where you will eventually make no mess at all. To avoid any spilled ink from staining the surface you are working on, place newspaper or cardboard over the surface. This way, if ink is spilled the newspaper or cardboard can simply be thrown away. It is also common for you to get ink on your hands the first few times you refill the printer ink. You can wear gloves to avoid this. If you happen to get ink on your skin, you can use a mild solution of bleach and water to remove the ink from your skin.

In the grand scheme of things, it seems worth a little mess and hassle to save a decent chunk of money by refilling the ink cartridge for your printer on your own.

Tags: printer cartridge refills, printer ink refills, refill printing cartridges

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Buying Tips.