My dad keeps an old inkjet printer of some brand I forget right now. It refuses to scan without ink. So he has some ink cartridges that he puts in when he wants to print or scan and the rest of the time they are removed and the orange plastic caps they came with reattached. They live in a bag sitting on top of the printer.
Now they don't dry out and the printer can't sneakily squirt all the very very expensive ink into a sponge when you least expect it.