Where I Get Cheap (But Pretty) Storage Baskets

Disclosure: this post may contain affiliate links, which means I may make a commission if you decide to make a purchase through one of my links, at no cost to you.

My storage basket game has been pretty weak for a long time. And until recently, I hadn’t yet resolved my need for storage vs. my penny-pinching ways.

You may not have even noticed if you follow along sporadically, but when I “stage” photos (using that term loosely, as a true staging pro would spend hours trying to get the perfect shot, and I just want to take one in focus before the daylight is gone), I have pretty much been using the same ones all over the house.

The ones in my bedroom and in my entryway? Yep — same baskets, just now repurposed. I will happily dump out a basket I use all the time in favor of getting a better shot when I’m finishing a before/after makeover. I wind up with a mess behind the scenes, but it’s what I have to do to make things work! I do still need double the storage though, so I have found this to be a problem I need to solve once and for all.

The main issue with storage baskets, at least for me, is that they make things look really nice, but the good ones always seem so needlessly expensive. And the cheap ones? The often look really, really cheap — plasticky, the texture is all weird, and the color is just slightly off. I mean, it’s a box. It doesn’t even cook me dinner or taste like wine. So if I’m shopping for something and have to edit items in my cart (ahem, so I can still buy wine), then I almost always wind up putting away the $30 storage basket in favor of other things. But because the cheap baskets are ugly, I wind up not buying that one, either. And I know that I should justify spending money on things when I know I’ll use them for a long time, but with certain items, my white-knuckled grip on my credit card just won’t let me do it.

Until recently. I found a good way to save a few pennies on these wallet-suckers. And here’s the brand name you need to be looking out for: GAIA Contemporary Home. Finding this simple brand name has helped me replace the baskets I need in the entry and still use the others for their original purposes.

This is not a sponsored post or even one where I can link you to a bunch of examples so you can buy online. I see a handful of them on eBay or other sites, but I can’t seem to find a steady supply for ordering. To get ahold of them, I hit up TJMaxx, Marshalls, or Homegoods.

Homegoods always has the biggest selection, but I find that TJMaxx has them on clearance a lot. So, when a similarly sized basket might cost me $15-20 or even $30 (Target, I’m giving you the side-eye on this one), I can get these for as little as $4 if I’m looking hard enough!

The main benefit of these vs other brands is that I can get these in larger sizes and without spending $100 before I walk out of the store. I know that Ikea has inexpensive baskets too (and now Ikea products are for sale on Amazon! affiliate), but I just don’t like the coloring on those as much (I have some in my laundry room actually, but the color is just a little dull). Usually, the larger ones are where I see the most savings. Trying to find ones that all match and fit neatly is strangely difficult sometimes, so if I find a pretty decent score, I’ll just swipe as many as I can. These have the right shape and the variation in the color of the straw makes it look more upscale to me. I need to get one more medium-sized one for my entryway, but the bigger ones will be perfect in the primary bedroom closet!

And… that’s it. That’s really all this post is about. I just wanted you guys to know the name so you can get $4-7 baskets instead of $15-20 ones and spend money on more important things like saving for your kid’s college tuition. Or wine.