11 Organization Tips And Tricks From Joanna Gaines You'll Want To Use In Your Home

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Joanna Gaines runs a tight ship, so you'll want to use her organization tips and tricks in your own home. With five kids, a thriving business, and a super busy schedule, fans are often left wondering how the HGTV star maintains her glamorous home. While Gaines is honest on social media about what life really looks like behind the scenes, she does point to one thing that keeps her home running smoothly: proper organization. If you have a plan and a system, you're far less likely to find yourself overwhelmed by clutter and chaos. 

Gaines has plenty of practical options — as in, you need to buy a few organizers to stay organized (who would have thought?) — but there are some out-there tips, as well. There are also some great real-life, busy mom-approved hacks for when you're up to your ears in stuff and just need a quick fix before company comes over. Some tricks will make your house more functional, while other tips will just make it look better. Either way, Gaines has you covered in the organization department.

Clutter tends to build up simply because your belongings don't have anywhere to go! Therefore, one of the easiest ways to stay organized is to make sure everything has a permanent spot to live, so it doesn't just sit out collecting dust. "A great way to stay organized is to create intentional spaces for toys, craft supplies, and odds and ends," Gaines told Architectural Digest. "I think storage is the most undervalued part of a home. Adequate storage can make every room feel more peaceful and beautiful simply by removing clutter and freeing up visual space." Let's look at some examples.

Your entryway or mudroom can easily become a cluttered dumping ground as you offload things while entering the house. To keep things organized, following Gaines' advice, you just need a few additions. The STORAGE MANIAC Expandable Shoe Rack gives you a place to store sneakers so they don't end up in a pile, and the Dahey Wall Mounted Organizer lets you hang your keys and drop off any mail or other papers that you only need temporarily. While having a table in the entryway is a great design idea, it just gives you yet another place to leave "stuff." If you don't want to mount things on the wall, consider an Amazon Basics Rectangular Plastic Desk Organizer or a JAMEND CLXP Decorative Tray on the table, so everything still has a distinct home.

Living with a big family in a multi-story home can easily be an organizational nightmare. Things often get used and moved around so much that it's unlikely they'll ever find their way back to where they belong. In some cases, families might institute a "leave it on the stairs" policy in an attempt to encourage passersby to carry things up with them. Yet, this can easily turn into a tripping hazard. Luckily, Gaines has a great happy medium to fix your kids' clutter. "Since my kids were big enough to walk, I've been putting name-labeled baskets on the stairs," she wrote on Magnolia. "Throughout the day they know to place their toys in their basket once they're done playing with them, rather than leaving them scattered around the house. At the end of the day, I ask them to take the toys up to the playroom and put them away."

This way, toys, clothes, homework, and the like have a fighting chance of making it back to their designated spot without tripping someone down the stairs in the process. Having a basket for each family member also encourages responsibility and accountabiity, as the designated person is less likely to think the mess belongs to someone else. The Levier Foldable Stair Step Basket with Leather Handle is great because it hooks onto the step, making it harder to kick over on accident. If you want monogrammed basket options, Etsy is a great place to start.

If you love to craft or bake, or find yourself working on a project for the holidays, you might see your home taken over by supplies. Gaines understands that sometimes, not everything will have a permanent home during these instances, because you're only using them for a temporary project. If you need something out of the way quickly, take a page from her book and feel free to store things a little bit unconventionally. "I have some friends coming over tonight and need to hide everything. Let me show you how you do that. Let me show you the trick," she shared with fans in an Instagram reel.

She then proceeds to show jars of peanut butter, boxes of crackers, and marshmallow bags stacked up in the dishwasher, baking supplies in the utensil drawer, and cereal mixed in with the cleaning supplies under the sink. All this to say, if it's only for a little while, she thinks using more creative organization hacks are totally okay. It doesn't matter where they end up (for now) — that's real life. If you do want to incorporate a little more organization even into this unconventional approach, you can use plastic bins to corral everything together, such as the Control Kitchen Clear Plastic Storage Bins.

Hanging on to sentimental items isn't being a packrat! Sometimes, even when you've sorted through old papers from college, clothes your children have outgrown, or sports trophies from your heyday, there are still things you don't want to give away. But keeping them packed in a box all jumbled together will also make them harder to find later on — or to enjoy when you'd like to revisit them. To fix this, Gaines recommends keeping things a touch more organized. "I finally packed my favorite baby shoes and clothes for each kid. I wrote them a note for later in case they are sentimental like their mama," she shared on her Instagram story, as reported by Apartment Therapy.

While Gaines appears to be using a packing cube, such as the BAGAIL Packing Cube Organizer Bags, you can also group more sentimental items in binders or even a shadow box. The key is to sort through the lion's share of things and choose your favorites you'd like to display or have easy access to. Things like sports jerseys and baby clothes can also easily be pinned inside boxes to show their shape, as with the Jinchuan Jersey Frame Display Case.

Staying on top of laundry can be a nearly impossible task. If you have the space, you can copy Gaines' strategy of keeping a table in the laundry room. Its presence can be a great hack to avoid piles of laundry on the couch or bed. You save time and effort by keeping the chore confined to one area. "I brought a table and chair into our laundry room a few years ago when I realized the place where I wash and fold may be one of my favorite spaces in our home," she shared on Instagram. While Gaines also loves to use her table as a spot for quiet reflection while she washes and dries, its practical benefits are unmatched.

If you have a smaller laundry room, you can recreate the idea with something like the Household Essentials Over The Door Small Ironing Board. By folding it down, you have an instant surface to fold laundry without needing to lug it around the house. However, you also aren't taking up valuable floor space with an actual table.

While there are plenty of useful items to buy at The Container Store, you don't always need to do your organizational shopping in the conventional spots. In fact, Gaines encourages fans to branch out and look for storage solutions in unique places. "I like to purchase unique pieces that offer a lot of practical organizational space. For example, I bought an old wood chicken feeder at an antiques store that I love, and it lives upstairs in the playroom," she told Architectural Digest. "It's the perfect 'built-in' organizational area for the kids, and it matches the style of the farmhouse."

With this tip, Gaines is pushing back against the idea that to be organized, your home needs to look like it stepped out of an IKEA catalog. While the minimal sightlines of the Japandai style are certainly nice, they aren't the only aesthetic that is clean and organized. Weathered furniture does just as good a job of hiding clutter, if that's your preferred look. A great place to find pieces that might serve double-duty for this purpose is on the ultimate furniture-shopping tool, Facebook Marketplace, as well as local estate sales and flea markets.

A great way to make sure everything fits where it's supposed to is by organizing things in similar containers. "The fun thing about being creative with the way you contain things is that things that typically wouldn't be cute, like cotton balls and Q-Tips, you can make it cute by getting cute little glass jars and putting them in a basket," Gaines wrote in her book "Homebody," as reported by The Delite. With this type of organization, you not only get to maintain a chicer home aesthetic that's not ruined by tacky packaging, but if you wanted to store things under the sink or in a medicine cabinet, it also helps you stay organized there. 

YINGERHUAN's Glass Regular Mouth Mason Jars are a great place to start for cotton balls and Q-Tips, as Gaines mentioned. Yet, you can take things a step further with a Niffgaff Toilet Paper Holder Stand instead of keeping rolls in the plastic bag, and adding a SMARTAKE 13-Piece Drawer Organizer to your drawers for things like feminine hygiene products, extra bars of soap, toothbrushes, etc.

In her book "Homebody," Gaines insists that decor can easily become disorganized clutter if you don't buy it with a plan in mind, or if you get something just because you think you're supposed to. "Filling a room with the things you think you should because you've seen someone else do it that way or because you just want it to feel finished will never yield a home you truly love," she writes in "Homebody," per GoodReads. "You can make a room feel both beautiful and complete without filling every corner and surface with a bunch of random stuff."

By following this tip, you'll realize that it's better to have an empty, uncluttered coffee table, than one filled with a jumble of aesthetic books you'll never once pick up. Instead, wait until you find options that truly interest you and add value to your home (perhaps even a copy of "Homebody" for yourself). The same can be said for buying little knick-knacks like wooden beads to lay across your end table or tiny statues from places like HomeGoods. This decor, without a connection to your family or the environment you want to create in your home, is meaningless clutter that will just get in the way and make it harder to keep things organized.

When your children share a bedroom, it can be tough to keep their belongings organized separately. However, a few of Gaines' five children do share rooms, so she knows how to keep things in line. "Each kid has their own organizational stuff," she told Country Living. "For the boys, they have a lot of the shared stuff, but the baskets under the bed — half are one boy's and the other half are the others. They have their spot that kind of says 'this is my stuff,' and it works for them."

This strategy not only cuts down on clutter strewn about the room, but it can also keep your kids from fighting over who owns what. It's a real win/win for parents. The key here is that the items don't need to be further organized inside the bin if that feels like too much trouble. Just be sure the bin itself is large enough to contain everything and is also easy enough to tuck away. Something like the StorageWorks Large Storage Baskets would work well for placement under the bed, while the Closetmaid Decorative Home Stackable 6 Cube Organizer is better for vertical storage, like in a closet.

When you live in a smaller home, it can feel difficult to stay organized simply because you might feel like you don't have enough room to be! To solve this, Gaines recommends creating as much transitional space with furniture placement as you can. This keeps your home organized by providing structure through flow. "Some people don't have this carved-out entry space. So, even if that means a table...it doesn't have to be a foyer. It's just the idea that, 'Hey, I can set my keys down.' It's just that nice, warm welcome," she told TODAY, per YouTube.

Intentional use of space is one of the best tips for styling a broken floor plan. That is, furniture arrangement can organize areas for different uses (i.e., work, dining, relaxing), even without walls. For example, you can steal her idea of an entry table to create a small hallway as you enter your home, and use it to stash your keys, shoes, and whatever else needs a home. Another great tip is to use furniture with built-in storage to create these zones as well, so you can stay even more organized. For example, the Wakefit Reversible Sectional Sofa Couch has a place to keep extra throw blankets, pillow shams, and anything else you might need for the living room. This way, everything is organized and out of sight, but ready to access when you need it.

Open shelving is a controversial design choice, but Gaines is proudly a big fan. She prefers it because it's not just practical, but also a way to save space and keep things tidy. When you have things out in the open and easy to see and reach, it makes it simpler to put them back in the right place and keep everything looking neat and organized. "Open shelving looks good just about anywhere and I love how it displays the items I use most while also helping me stay organized," she posted on Facebook.

You can find open shelves online like the TEN49 Real Wood Rustic Floating Shelves; however, for most DIYers, it's easy enough to create luxe-looking open shelves on your own. For the best results, use PIPE DÉCOR ½-inch by 6-inch Steel Pipes with dual threading, Niubid ½-inch Pipe Flanges, and Supply Giant ½-inch Pipe Caps combined with wood planks that are at least 6 inches deep. This project doesn't take much effort and can be finished in an afternoon. Simply attach the flanges to a wall stud so they have good support. You then attach the pipes to the flanges and cap them. Finally, stain or paint the wood to suit your style, then rest it on top of the pipes. If you are uneasy about it just resting on top, liquid cement or a similar product can help hold it in place.