I find I have to pay Western prices for shaving cream, and I'm always running out. Then, one fine day whilst traveling in Chengdu, I forgot to bring it. Desperate, I used hair conditioner from a packet that was lying by the sink. To my surprise it work wonderfully.
After experimenting with this technique on and off, while always going back to using real shaving cream, I finally just up and bought a big-ass bottle of hair conditioner and decided I'm not buying any more overpriced shaving cream. The hair conditioner works great, and it's take me a couple years worth of shaving to use it up.
Haven't come up with a solution for printer's ink though.