I also love my Grovemade MacBook dock in Maplewood. Here, you guys know just how much I love Grovemade's handmade products and this is a dock I recently got to house my MacBook Pro when I’m working at the office on my desk. It’s an elegant vertically orientated laptop stand that helps save space on my desk while having the practicality to dock and hook up my laptop to the CalDigit TS4 dock and monitor. It’s held in place with premium materials made from hardwood, stainless steel, merino wool felt, and natural cork to protect both your laptop and the desk it sits on. It’s also been hand sanded and finished off with vegetable-based oils so it’s bound to be a piece that sits on your desk for a while to come. My MacBook Pro M1 sits perfectly snug in the stand. Though at $130 for this stand, it is more on the expensive side on this list, but it is a quality purchase and you can also get 10% off with the discount code that I’ll link down below too.

So first up is this really handy portable shredder from Muji. It's so handy it's literally named Handy Shredder and at $15, this truly is a budget accessory to get. It's a portable hand crank shredder so no electricity is required and is perfect for shredding private documents that you plan to throw away. Although pretty simple, it's a high quality build from Japan and can shred two sheets of paper at once and there's a satisfaction with hand crank shredders, getting all your private documents shredded away with a few twists of the knob right here. Best of all, unlike bulky electric shredders, this one's hand operated and can be taken around with you just about anywhere. And at only $15 this is a pretty useful item to have handy in the office. I use it more often than I thought I personally would.

One of my personal favorites on this list, the Kodak's new Actar H35 camera and I've been really enjoying this one. This isn't a digital camera, it's actually an old school film camera but hear me out because it's something you want to at least know more about. For starters, this bad boy is only $50 brand new and it shoots beautiful film photos without costing an arm and a leg and the burden of trying to find second-hand film cameras. Just take a look at these shots that I've developed over the last month. They have an incredibly nostalgic look and filter to them that you just don't get with modern cameras nowadays, with its aesthetic grain, lens blur, and sepia tones – all things that you do not want in a modern digital camera but it looks beautifully imperfect on film. It's also a half frame camera meaning you get 72 exposures on a single film roll rather than the typical 36 exposures that you usually find, which means more bang for buck. The camera itself looks super retro and visually appealing to use, although it's a little too light for my liking. And film photography is back on the rise in an era of embracing the imperfect, and the Actar H35 is perfect for capturing Kodak moments as they call it.

This is Bellroy's famous tech kit and Bellroy is currently sponsoring today's video. This tech kit is an absolute essential for tech heads that frequently use their laptops and commute. It organizes all my tech accessories in a single spot and prevents my everyday tech from becoming a tangled mess. So if you're a student with a bunch of textbooks or a traveler with luggage, you can throw this into your carry bag knowing everything is protected and organized in a single spot. It features plenty of pockets, magnetic slips, mesh pockets, and is made out of quality recycled woven fabric. Bellroy is a certified B Corp company, which means they have the greater good in mind when they create their products. They’ve met the high standards of social and environmental impact and they're a terrific company to get behind. Overall, Bellroy's tech kit is a stylish way of holding your everyday carry items and it has this modern, techy look to it. So at $59 US dollars, this is an affordable and worthwhile buy as it is, but you can actually get an extra 10% off this tech kit and all other Bellroy products on their website through the link in the description. I’ll leave it down there for you guys to check out.

I take it with me everywhere when I'm working remotely and it’s perfect for students too. If you’ve watched my earlier desk setup videos, you’ll know that I’ve used their Curve stand to prop up my MacBook next to my main display as a secondary display. It was extremely useful and beautiful in its design. This is their relatively new updated version, the 12 South Curve Flex, and the name is a hint at its design. It’s a Z-shaped flexible frame with a curved base and it can sit your MacBook up to 22 inches in height from your desk. This prevents you from hunching down to work on your laptop and helps alleviate that sort of discomfort. There is also an included neoprene carry case that it comes with and the ability to fold this entire stand into a flat pack. It makes for a portable option carrying it abroad or to school without scratching up anything else in your bag. At $80, this stand makes for a league addition into any working space.

This $99 mechanical keyboard is incredibly well built for the price. It’s the Azio Cascade keyboard with custom retro arcade keycaps for a really fun splash of uniqueness to my desk. I absolutely love the refreshing look of this keyboard. It’s a 75% hot-swappable keyboard, which basically means it is a 75% size of a full-size keyboard, similar to a laptop keyboard, and completely customizable switches and keycaps. This keyboard here features brown Gateron Pro switches and when paired with its aluminum upper body with dual sound dampers, it feels really pleasant and crispy to type on. Here is a sound sample for you [sound sample]. With the backlighting turned off, it lasts a solid 160 hours of use before it needs a charge. But when it does need a charge, it thankfully comes with a USB-C port. So yeah, I love the fun look and feel of this keyboard, and it’s a quality keyboard and an affordable way to dive into the world of custom mechanical keyboards without breaking the bank. This keyboard is really fun to use.

Another fun addition for your desk. These $20 collectibles are cute pixel art renditions of iconic characters to spice up your desk or general setup. I personally got Ken from Street Fighter and Flash. Pop in a couple double-A batteries and they light up like a lifelike 8-bit character. I’ve had these for years now and the batteries are still running strong. At $20, grabbing a few to display on a shelf is a great fun way to show off your personality and brighten up the space. It doesn’t seem like their main website is up and running anymore, which is weird, but there are still a ton of them available on Amazon which I’ll place a link to in the description box for you guys.

A reliable SSD is important for just about anyone that works off a laptop. I’ve used a few over the years and the first one I ever got was the affordable Samsung T5 SSD. You can get these or the T7 in a one-terabyte size for only about $80 these days on Amazon too. These tiny SSD drives transfer files up to 10 times faster than external hard drives with read/write speeds of up to 1000 megabytes per second. Although I don’t get close to these speeds on my old T5 here, it’s also shock resistant with drops from six foot. I’ve thrown this one around for years and haven’t had a single issue with it yet. This is a great budget SSD to get started and is fast enough to improve your workflow and get work done that much faster with its fast read and write speeds, particularly if you’re transferring big files or do video editing, for example.

A great addition for those who want a really sturdy, quality pen that they can use for years to come. At first glance, it looks like a pretty simple pen and it is. It’s exactly what it’s meant to be. It’s a relatively small pen with nice heft to it at 25 grams and is machined with an aluminum body with a cerakote finishing and a matte finishing as well. The custom click mechanism plated in copper is extremely satisfying to click too. At $90, it’s by no means a budget pen, but if you plan to use it for many years to come, considering it’s built to last a lifetime, divide that cost across years and it technically is an affordable purchase, rather than you know, buying and replacing a ton of cheap ballpoint pens

The next must-have budget tech and accessory is a Kindle reader. This one here is the premium Kindle Oasis but the new Kindle has recently just launched for only a hundred dollars which is ten dollars less than the previous 2019 Kindle and a full $150 less than this Oasis here that I have. Having all your books from textbooks to paperback books and even PDFs on a single device that lasts literally weeks on end is a decent reason alone to invest the hundred dollars. Sure, you could do this on an iPhone or an iPad but you’d be missing out on the glare-free screen and e-ink technology which mimics a printed page and look and is low on power consumption and high contrast for great readability in any lighting conditions, from the beach to a dark room. I’ve taken this Kindle with me everywhere and it’s the perfect bedside companion considering it doesn’t emit any blue light which if you didn’t already know is a big sleep disruptor.