Dealmaster: Declutter your home or office with these Prime Day organization tools

May 07, 2024

Chuong Nguyen - Jul 12, 2023 6:02 pm UTC

I didn't upgrade my tech or add any of the hundreds of gadgets from our Amazon retail holiday coverage to my shopping cart this year for Prime Day—high interest rates and a perception that the economy isn't at its fullest potential contributed to my penny-pinching.

Instead, I played it more low-key this outing, opting for home, office, and desk organization tools in an attempt to add simplicity to my life. If you'd like to tackle similar organizational projects, I've got you covered. Here are the organizational tools I bought and the reasoning for my purchases.

Originally designed for eating and cooking utensils, I've used these expandable organizers before in my desk to organize my pens, cables, and tools. They're a handy item to keep things organized, and you can expand them as your needs (or collection of wires) grow.

I like to keep a few pens for signing documents or addressing an envelope, a couple of different cords to charge my phone and other gadgets, and a small compact wall charger.

A small pair of scissors or pocket knife, a compact flashlight, and other small items round out some of the slots here. I hide my extra postage stamps underneath the drawer as I seldom mail things, but they come in handy when I need to send back RSVPs. My new organizer will be going in my main drawer under my standing desk.

These versatile storage cubes are great for storing little bits and pieces floating around your office. I have a few in rotation throughout the house, and this latest set will be specific for my office.

In the family room, I use a box for all my chargers and charging cables, and guests can quickly find a plug that works for their devices when visiting. I have one box in the laundry room to house all my laundry cleaning essentials, like a scrub brush, special detergent that I may not use regularly, club soda for stains, and some cloth napkins along with some Tide-to-go pens.

For the office, I intend to keep a box to house some surface cleaners, which I'll keep stowed in a closet on the side for easy access, along with some microfiber cleaning cloths. I'll have a second box for my Roborock accessories, including spare mopping pads and bristles for my robot vacuum, and a third box will be for my various envelopes for bills and mail that I intend to keep for a bit.

As my office is located in a spare bedroom, there's already a closet, but I need a bit more space to keep things tidy. I plan to use the storage cabinet to keep extra supplies and snacks for the office.

Energy drinks, extra Nespresso Vertuo coffee pods, a first aid kit, my tablet, extra batteries for my Ring security cameras (those are placed on the perimeter of the house so I don't have to worry about privacy while inside my home), paper towels, and more will call this storage cabinet their new home.

Extra cable ties, zip ties, and cord management supplies will live in their own box on the bottom shelf. Storage cabinets are a great way to keep things locked away.

Try as I may, I haven't fully transitioned to a paperless life. While I don't print out any documents or forms anymore, I occasionally still keep a ream of printer paper nearby for printing out return shipping labels.

And as the historian of the family, I like to also keep photo paper on hand to print out and frame photographs. Designed to keep pantries organized, the pantry organizing shelf system will likely find a home in my closet where I'll keep my stacks of paper.

In addition to storing printer paper, photo paper, and other paper supplies, you can use these shelves as a makeshift stand to lift your printer up or to organize other office supplies.

Thanks to Apple's push for e-SIM, I don't have a Ziploc bag of various SIM cards for travel anymore. However, that doesn't mean that my office space is free of little knickknacks. Stasher bags are an environmentally friendly alternative to disposable Ziplocs and provide the perfect home for little items, like paperclips and binder clips, as well as snacks.

I hope to use these bags for my office to keep things bundled together. A few tubes of ointments (itch relief, antibiotic, and travel lotion) can live in one bag, while another bag can be used to house different spare screws from the various office furniture that I've assembled over the years. It's essentially like travel packing cubes for your office and life.

I know it's not good to eat right next to my computer keyboard, but I like to snack when working. I have a set of airtight food containers in the kitchen pantry for snacks, and I will be adding a few more to my collection to store some of my favorites, which include a rotation of sweet and savory treats. If a regular work office can have a break room, then I am simply adding a break room inside my home office.

These snack containers will gleefully find a home in my storage cabinet. In addition to food, you can group anything you find together in these containers, from binder clips and paper clips to photos and film, and more.

Storage containers are a versatile tool inside any home or office organizer's arsenal, and the lids help make these containers stackable to free up space.

While I don't own or carry a purse, I love my collection of backpacks. In the pre-pandemic days when I commuted to the office, I'd change between different bags depending on what I was doing that day.

Usually, I'd opt for a smaller backpack if I was in the city for a quick meeting, but if I was there for the entire day, I'd like to bring extra amenities, which would require a bigger bag. Now, all my backpacks lie on the floor inside my office closet, and having some hooks to hang them up would clean up my closet a bit.

And not only will these hangers help keep my backpacks off the floor, but they also lift up my bags to a more ergonomic level, so I don't have to bend down to find a pen or retrieve my laptop from my bag.

I infrequently have guests inside my home office, so I don't want to keep extra seating to clutter up my space. Instead, I found filing cabinets that come with a padded top that can double as extra seating. This way, the cabinets can tuck neatly under my desk, and I can wheel them out if I have guests.

These seats also do double-duty as storage bins to keep all my other office essentials handy, like a stapler, some tape, important files and documents, and more. They also lock for added privacy. I see myself storing important papers and other infrequently accessed paper in the big drawer, with recent bills relegated to the middle drawer, and the top drawer for everything else.

With the seat tops on these filing cabinets, I will also toss my flimsy wooden folding chairs.

This wood-carved coat rack hangs on your wall and can serve as a piece of wooden wall art. If you have a need to hang something like a coat or, in my case, headphones, then you can flip down the wooden peg, and you have an instant hook.

I use several pairs of headphones, and finding a place to store them so I can easily access them when needed has been challenging, and having multiple headphone stands on my desk seems like a waste of desktop real estate. For audiophiles, this wall-mounted rack next to a desk seems like an elegant solution for having too much tech! The best part is that the pegs on this piano-style coat rack can be tucked back into the wall-mounted base when not in use to keep things tidy.

I fondly remember my parents' desk and hutch growing up. It was spacious and provided plenty of space to organize, store things, and house ornamental trinkets and decorations. The downside was that it was bulky, heavy, and would seem so out of place in today's open floorplan aesthetic. Enter the monitor riser. I call it the modern hutch for an open and airy desk.

Not only does this shelf help to elevate your monitor(s) to a more ergonomic height, especially if you're using a display or all-in-one like the iMac that doesn't come with a height-adjustable stand, but also the space underneath the riser is great to stow away your keyboard and mouse when not in use or hide other items on your desk.

Some risers come with a drawer to keep things looking extra tidy, while others come with more a premium construction for an elevated aesthetic. You can add a storage drawer for additional organization if your minimalist standing desk lacks one or a keyboard drawer underneath your desk for improved ergonomics.

This one's technically a tech accessory, but I can't get enough of UGREEN's charging hub. With six total ports split between four USB-C and two USB-A plugs, I can keep all my gadgets simultaneously charging.

I already have one in the living room to keep our iPhones juiced up and replenish the battery inside our Apple TV remote when needed, and a second one for the office will help manage the snaking cables going around my workspace.

Not only that, but it will free up so many slots on my surge protector, as I currently have a surge protector plugged into another one to get enough outlet spots for all the charging bricks I have going.

This multi-port charging hub is a win all around, giving me back my outlet space while also helping me manage cable clutter. I'll be pairing this with some braided fast-charging USB-C charging cables of 100 W to keep my laptop and iPad charged, some Lightning cables for my iPhone, an Apple Watch charging puck, and a cable to charge my Garmin Epix fitness watch.

Originally made to tuck into the cabinet in your bathroom to keep your supplies organized under the sink, these versatile organizers are a terrific way to store things and tidy up your office. Although I don't have built-ins in my home office, I intend to use several of these on the top shelf above the clothes rack in my bedroom closet where I work.

There's plenty of space to store photos and letters, coupons and bills, and more. And the two-drawer stackable and slide-out design makes it easy to save on space and quickly get into the drawers' contents. Pair this with a label maker to create some nice custom labels for the front of the drawers.

Along with cable managers, cord organizers, cable boxes, and zip ties, these simple organization tools can help clean up the clutter in the home office. I'll be adding additional shelves and storage boxes, storage closets, and racks to keep things ultra-organized as I go.