Home printers are relatively cheap. It's the ink or toner and paper that drains your wallet.

But there are ways to cut your printing costs.

Tom Watson, King County's Eco Consumer has a number of ideas:

- Adjust the margin setting. "The standard margin on the sides is 1.25 inches. If you reduce that to 0.75 inches, you'll really save a lot of paper over time," he said.

- You can also decrease the font size and use single spacing to get more on each page.

- Consider using Ecofont, which was developed in Europe. It puts little holes in the letters, which adds up to 20 percent less ink. But you probably won't notice the holes just by looking at the printout. You can download Ecofont for free.

- Unless you're printing something that has to look super nice, print in the "draft" mode. "The draft setting uses less ink and that's usually in your control panel setting on your computer."

- Print preview can be your money-saving friend. Before you hit print, see how the job will look. "And that's especially helpful when printing material from Web sites," Watson said.

- Watson says turn off the printer when you're not using it and unplug it when you go away. "Some printers consume 4 or 5 watts of power even when they're off and that'll cost you several dollars a year," he said.

Some other things you can do to save money:

Use both sides of the page or print more than one page per side. The "print preview" function lets you do that.

If you have a color printer, select black and white option when the document is not important.

Of course, the best way to save is not to print at all. Save things as documents or PDF files.

And recycle your old ink and toner cartridges. You can bring them to the big office stores and get $3 added to your rewards card.

More information:

Consumer Reports: Six Ways to Save Money When You Print

Cheap Printing: 5 Ways to Save Bucks on Ink and Paper

PC World: How to Beat Printing Costs

PC World Video: How to Save Money on Printing