De-Cluttering The Dining Room/Eating Area

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In today’s world of hectic schedules the family dinner is becoming a rare occurrence. Dining rooms are quickly becoming either a well-decorated but seldom used room or a dumping ground for clutter. So, we’ll focus on a few ideas you can use to organize whatever area you’re using for dining, whether it’s a breakfast nook, dining room, or kitchen table.

The first thing to mention is also the most obvious; you can’t use a table if it’s covered in clutter! If your table top is littered with books, purses, and newspapers you will be less likely to remove all of it to sit down for a meal. At that point it becomes easier to either eat in the living room while watching TV or stand in the kitchen. So, as is the norm, de-cluttering will be your first task. The important thing to keep in mind though is that you must maintain this new tidy surface. If you don’t you will quickly find yourself back where you started…eating in another room! Some decoration on the table top is fine, as long as you keep up with the dusting and cleaning and can either remove it or work around it at meal times.

Organizing the dining area can be tricky. If your area is in the kitchen then dealing with setting the table can be quite easy. However, if your area is a room or so away you may have to get a little more creative.
Some of us can make use of furniture (china cabinets, buffets, etc.) to store serving dishes and table linens so they’re handy. Others have to make do with carrying what we need from room to room. You can use trays, make several trips, have everyone fill their plates buffet style in the kitchen, or you can make use of your wonderful family helpers! The important thing is to figure out a system that helps mealtimes flow well and stick to it. It will eventually become habit and you’ll wonder why you hadn’t been using the dining area all along!

The next thing to do is to focus on de-cluttering the rest of the area. The table and chairs should be easily accessible. If the dining area is also used as the homeschool room you will need to address those issues as well. We have done different things over the years, adapting as needed depending on our current home (we are a military family and move quite a lot!) and the differing educational needs of the children. Here are a few ideas for homeschool issues:

*Have children bring their books to the table and then remove them when school is over. This will be a chore each and every day they have school. Perhaps you can make it seem more pleasant for them if they have an individual container or basket to carry their school books in?
*Use existing furniture for school item storage. Alternately, you can store supplies and books under the same furniture.
*Create shelves or bookcases to hold items.

Now, stand back and take an honest appraisal of the room. Do you have too much stuff on the floor? Do decorative items get knocked off the walls as people walk by them? Is your china cabinet crammed with stuff to the point that you can’t focus on any one thing in particular? Do your knick knacks collect dust because you don’t have time to keep up with them? If so, it may be time to sort through and streamline these items. For instance, if you have several items you like to display, you can always alternate what you leave out. You can change your decorations with the seasons. That way you can display your favorites, but not be overwhelmed with cleaning chores!

Keep this in mind: We should always be careful not to sacrifice functionality for the sake of ornamentation!

The bottom line is, you don’t have to settle for eating any old where! Create a comfortable and usable dining area you and your whole family can enjoy.