I enjoy the idea of being organized and minimalist but accumulate clutter faster than I make the time to put it away. Here’s some stuff I’ve found useful as I’ve tried to make my desk an effective working space.

If you want to go deep into the internet rabbithole on this, you could see what the 4 million people on reddit at /r/battlestations are up to — it’s a community all about desk setups.

• I’m a big fan of getting monitors off your desk to free up space, and this Huano Dual Monitor Spring Monitor Arms has been great — it lets you move and rotate monitors around without having to loosen bolts
• Laptop docking stations remind me of printers, where they always seem frustratingly flaky, with some quirk always irritating you as you’re trying to get work done — I’ve been a big fan of the CalDigit TS4 dock, which is a bit ridiculous in its price, since I bought it 3 months ago (it’s a good item to wait for Prime Day or Black Friday deals) but it just works, which I so appreciate
• I love TheWireCutter’s approach to keeping their recommendations simple, usually with 2-3 items per category, so you’re not overwhelmed with options — for monitor, I’m a big fan of dual 27″ monitors (even though the big ultrawide screens are an interesting option), but my Dells are a few years old, so I’d point anyone interesting in new monitors to TheWireCutter’s monitor recommendations
• I clipped this light one of my monitors to have a down-facing desk light for when I need it 
• I love this desk shelf to store things under it, like my laptop docking station and raise my laptop up off the desk
  • On stop of the shelf, I have this bamboo pen holder and phone charger 
• I like this desk mat to use as a big mousepad
• I use this clamp to add a ring light and a webcam (I’ll defer to TheWireCutter’s webcam recommendations, as my webcam is getting long in the tooth) to the top of the monitor stand, between the monitors, when I don’t want to use the laptop camera, to light my face, and to avoid the camera on top of my monitors
• I clipped this desk clamp power block onto my desk to have power and USB plugs handy for things like recharging batteries or plugging in a soldering iron
• Off to the side, I use this to bamboo device organizer to hold tech stuff (e.g., iPad, Kindle) while it’s charging (it’s nice to have a home for these) and some notebooks
• I have this USB power plug under the desk to help with charging cords, though I would get something with more ports if I did this one again
• Under the desk, I have this cord organizer to pull cords through SIGNUM Cable management, horizontal, silver color – IKEA