I don't know when I stopped using a printer in my home, but it was probably around the time that I stopped using physical contracts for my photography business and switched to digital. As a homeschooling parent, I've had reasons to print things here and there over the intervening years, but never to a degree that a trip to the library couldn't solve things.
All this changed last month when I brought the HP Smart Tank 5101 into our lives. Several weeks into my new printer-heavy life, I'm wondering how I made it so long without one — and strongly believe that families are truly sleeping on this all-in-one option for home printing.
Here are 5 reasons why your family needs a printer, and specifically this printer, right now.
It comes with up to two years of ink.
OK, OK, OK: first things first, this printer comes up with up to two years' worth of ink which means your family will be good to go for quite some time, even if your kid accidentally-on-purpose prints out 50 copies of their book report (OK, maybe not… then).
But in all seriousness, this is an impressive amount of ink and that alone takes some stress out of your day. Go ahead and put that reminder on the calendar two years from now! Laughs in exhausted mom.
Printing things somewhere else is actually not always that fun.
My past homeschooling adventures at the library notwithstanding, it is definitely not really that fun to run all over town searching for a printer because the one at work is out or too many people were using it that day. While everyone's favorite standby, Staples, definitely still prints documents, you will need to get it to yourself one way or another.
I don't know about you, but my method usually goes like this: I email the document to myself, go to Staples, sign in to the computer, realize I have to sign into my email, immediately get thwarted by Google's two-step authentication, then realize I need to know my password, have no idea what my password is at this point, reset my password to something that I will now have to also update on my phone, finally get into my email, and then print the document.
Now I can just literally … hit print. Boom.
Minimalism is also kind of boring.
Don't take this personally minimalism fans, but I've been edging my way back into a more colorful, somewhat more chaotic, way of life for a few years now … and not having a printer definitely fit into the minimalist trend, but now I just like having stuff around me that makes my life easier, including a printer.
That's it, that's the message: you can keep your home clean and bare and without anything useful, or you can have a printer on your desk and an espresso machine and a juicer and a tea kettle on your counter and liiiiiiiive cozy life.
You can print ... everything.
It had been so long since I had really had a printer at home that I forgot how many things you can actually print. Practical stuff, like shipping labels and stamps. Stickers (so many stickers! all the stickers!). Homework, of course. Permission slips. Weird memes from the internet that will horrify and delight your teen son when he walks in and finds them plastered on his wall. Endless options!
Photo albums are coming back (manifest it) and you'll be ahead of the game.
In addition to printers, there's another item from yesteryear that I am on a one-woman mission to bring: the good old-fashioned photo album. I love a good picture book like the rest of us, but they lack that truly cozy aesthetic that photo albums just exude.
You know what will help you with your own photo album journey? An at-home printer! You can stay up all night, sipping a beverage of your choice and listening to Fleetwood Mac and laugh-crying about your child being closer to adulthood than infancy, and print 500 photos of him, all from the comfort of your own home, while wearing your favorite cozy pajamas. If that's not the dream, I don't know what is.
