Here are some of the areas under the cost cutters' microscopes:

HOUSEKEEPING -- American Standard, the maker of plumbing fixtures and air conditioners, is saving $70,000 a year at a plant in Tyler, Tex., by having its crew vacuum the entryway floor mats instead of sending out the mats for cleaning. The same factory was paying to have used wooden pallets carted away; now it is selling them. The net gain is $38,000 a year.

GREENERY -- Xerox is saving $200,000 a year by cutting out a plant-watering service; employees have installed an ''adopt a plant'' program to keep the foliage hydrated. Art Institutes International at San Francisco, a commercial art school, went one better. It had been paying a local company about $700 a month to provide and maintain plants and cut flowers throughout its seven-story building; it has reduced the cost to $450 by forgoing foliage in hallways, offices and other areas that only the staff frequents. ''We want to be smart with how we spend our resources, without looking like we're cutting costs,'' said Barbara L. Roberts, the school's president.

RIDES HOME -- The Goldman Sachs Group used to pay for car services to drive analysts home after 8 p.m., even if they lived in suburbs that were a triple-digit fare away. ''Now, unless we're really working well past 9 p.m., we settle for a taxi to the train station,'' a Goldman analyst said.

FREE FOOD -- Goldman has also eliminated the boxes of apples, grapes and oranges that used to be available all day. And editors and writers at Time Inc., part of AOL Time Warner, have been weaned from the free fruit, sodas and lavish closing-night dinners to which they had become accustomed. At Xerox, catered meetings are out. Instead, ''people order in subs that they pay for out of their own pockets, or take a break and have lunch in a local cafeteria,'' said Kathleen A. Hargather, vice president for nonproduction purchasing.

OFFICE SUPPLIES -- Student Advantage insists that all employees use the pens and papers that the company stocks in bulk -- ''if you want neon-colored Post-it notes or gel pens, it's on your nickel,'' Mr. Goldman said. And Canon U.S.A. is recycling furniture. For example, during an expansion, its Hawaii office asked for about $70,000 for new chairs, desks and such. Instead, Canon shipped excess furniture from its Jamesburg, N.J., office. The shipping and reassembling cost was $17,000.

TRINKETS AND TROPHIES -- Investment bankers at Credit Suisse First Boston have been told to keep the cost of Lucite mementos -- the fancy clear tokens that are usually distributed to clients and bankers after a deal and that can cost $75 to $250 each -- to below $2,500 a deal. The firm used to give out 20 to 50 a deal, including some to members of the Credit Suisse team; now the bankers are to give most of the trophies to clients. (At The New York Times Company, even little keepsakes are going by the boards. At the annual Take Our Daughters to Work Day last month, some girls complained that for the first time they did not get goody bags and had to bring their own pencils and paper.)

CELEBRATIONS -- It used to be that when a big merger deal went down, the investment bankers and their clients -- and their spouses or significant others -- would have lavish weekend celebrations at hotels or convention centers. And those were in addition to the closing dinners, with lobster and free-flowing Champagne. Several big investment banks, including Credit Suisse, Goldman and the Salomon Smith Barney unit of Citigroup, are eliminating such weekends and asking their staffs to keep down the dinner guest lists.