16 Great Last-Minute Deals: Home Goods, Office Gear, and Kitchen Tools

‘Tis the season for burying your arms up to your elbows in dough, broth, and pie. Winter doesn’t always have to mean a retreat into your home, but if you’re outside sleighing or just slaying the snowy hiking trails, it’s nice to come home to a warm bed, a comfortable home office, and the smell of bread baking in the oven. Check out these deals on baking tools and workstation accessories, and turn your home into your own winter retreat.

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Kitchen Deals

Cooking can be a very equipment-intensive exercise. With so much gear on the market, it’s hard to figure out exactly what you need, what would be nice to have, and what is all unnecessary marketing fluff. Take a look at our kitchen and cooking guides, such as How to Cook in a Tiny Kitchen, Gear for Baking Bread at Home, Best Chef Knives, and the Only Seven Pots and Pans You Need.

Few things look as much at home on an Instagram page as they would on the set of Mad Men. This is the archetypical product most people think of when they hear the words “stand mixer.” The Artisan model has a tilting head that makes removing the bowl as easy as pie. There’s also the KitchenAid Professional 6-Qt Mixer for $430 ($100 off), which lacks the tilting head but offers a height-adjustable arm and a more powerful motor for mixing the thickest of doughs.

Right up there with Le Creuset in the pantheon of Dutch oven royalty is Staub. A Dutch oven is one of the most versatile pieces in your kitchen. Make stews, steam oysters, bake bread—do it all. Every kitchen needs a Dutch oven, and an enameled cast-iron one makes clean-up easier by letting you cook acidic foods that’d strip the seasoning off bare cast iron. Not all colors or sizes are on sale for the same price, or on sale at all, so cross your fingers that your favorite color is on sale. Or choose a new favorite color.

Don’t ruin a good steak dinner by making your guests saw through their meals with a table knife. Every carnivore needs a good steak knife, but most tableware sets neglect to include them. These stainless steel knives come in an olivewood chest for storage and presentation. There’s also a 10-piece set for $112 ($28 off).

The original Instant Pot became famous for combining the abilities to slow-cook, pressure-cook, stew, bake, and broil. With a quick rinse, you could go from making homemade yogurt to roasting a whole chicken. Now, it’s available with an air fryer lid accessory for making dishes such as crispy fried chicken and turkey.

If you’re eternally short on counter space, finding room for your cutting board can feel like an involuntary yoga session. This solid maple cutting board fits over a standard-width sink so that it doesn’t have to compete with mixing bowls and other prep surfaces.

Work-From-Home Deals

Lots of us became full-time home office workers when the world went into lockdown last year. We’re coming up on two years now, so if you haven’t given your home office the attention it deserves, cruise through our guides on Everything You Need to Work From Home Like a Pro, Best Webcams, Best Office Chairs, and Best Monitors.

The G305 is a favorite among WIRED’s reviews team. It’s affordable, ergonomically comfortable, and will run for up to 250 hours on a single AA battery. It also has a mere 1-millisecond latency, which means lag is practically nonexistent. Even if you’re not a gamer, you should think about using one. A cheap gaming mouse will do wonders for your wrist.

We called this webcam “sharp, but overpriced” in our guide to the Best Webcams, but at half-off, it’s excellent value. It can shoot at crispy 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second. This is the same price we saw it drop to on Black Friday.

Want to upgrade the quality of your microphone? Whether it’s for a new podcast you’re mulling over or the covers you’re recording for YouTube, this USB mic is a great step up from the built-in mics on your laptop or phone. Read our Best Podcast and Livestream Gear guide for more details.

These are our favorite wireless headphones for most people (9/10, WIRED Recommends). It has some of the best noise canceling you’ll find for the price, a fantastic soundstage and audio quality, and improved microphones for better call quality. It frequently dips to this price, but it’s well worth it. 

We love mechanical keyboards here at WIRED. Compared to a typical membrane keyboard—the kind on your laptop—a mechanical keyboard feels more tactile and, for many of us, more pleasant to use. Das Keyboard is one of the original brands behind the 2000s revival of mechanical keyboards, and it’s built up a quality reputation in this increasingly crowded market. The X50Q is a full-size keyboard, meaning it has a number keypad, so it can pull double duty for gaming and work.

This is the top pick in our guide to the Best Mechanical Keyboards. You can choose between linear, tactile, and clicky switches, but don’t worry, you can swap out the switches to something else if the defaults aren’t your speed. The only thing we don’t like? It uses a MicroUSB cable for charging (included). 

There’s an old saying about files: If it doesn’t exist in three places, it doesn’t exist. That means you should always have at least two backups, in addition to the original files. This 2-terabyte external drive offers a lot of storage. You could run MacOS Time Machine backups for a long, long time or pack the drive full of 4K movies and HDR photographs. There are also 500 GB ($80) and 1 TB ($130) models if you don’t need quite that much storage, such as if you primarily back up documents.

Bedding Deals

Nights grow longer in the winter, so if ever during the year there’s a time to upgrade the quality of your sleep, it’s now. Snuggle down into a new, comfy bed with the Best Mattresses You Can Buy Online, and get high-tech with the Best Sunrise Alarms and Best Sound Machines.

This hybrid foam/spring mattress was one of WIRED reviews director Jeffrey Van Camp’s favorite mattresses. He called it a “true runner-up in comfort to my top pick.” It packs individually wrapped coils within five layers of foam of various densities, including a 1.5-inch top layer that provides some soft cushioning over the firm, supportive inner layers.

I’m a big fan of the LaCrosse down comforter’s warmth and large amount of goose down fill. Down is growing increasingly expensive, but this is a deal for a cotton comforter filled with 500-550 fill goose down. For a non-goose-down alternative, check out the LaCross LoftAIRE. 

We like the grid-like texture of this all-foam mattress. WIRED reviews director Jeffrey Van Camp says it felt cool and airy, like lying on a bunch of silicone waffles. Since there are no inner metal coils, lying on it will feel different than a hybrid mattress. Purple offers a 100-day return policy if you decide an all-foam mattress isn’t for you, although since it takes time for the foam to break in, they’ll make you wait at least 21 days before returning it.

If you’re a side sleeper, you know how hard it can be to find a comfortably shaped pillow. Three types of shredded memory foam fill the Tempur-Cloud, allowing you to shape it as you like for side sleeping, back sleeping, and facedown sleeping. The cover is removable so you can wash it.

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