Rounding up the dining room…..
Wow would you look at that, here we are at the end of March already. This month seems to have gone by so fast and gotten away on me. I can’t wait to hear how you did with your dining rooms. Were you able to tackle the clutter and find alternate locations for some of the stuff that accumulates on the table? I have no idea how many people are participating this month but hopefully we’ll get a few entrants. It’s always inspiring to see before and after pictures of what others have accomplished. Remember it doesn’t matter how big or small the improvement, any improvement that makes life easier for you and your family is good news!
So if you organized any part of your dining room recently please blog your before and after pictures and link up to Mr. Linky below. Please link up directly to your individual Round-Up post and NOT to your home page. You can do this in Blogger by: right clicking on the time at the bottom of the post you want to link to, click “copy shortcut” and then paste it into the Mr. Linky.
You’ll have until 11:59 pm Monday night (March 31st) to link up and then Tuesday I will randomly choose someone from all those who participated in February and/or March to receive a prize (it’s okay if you didn’t participate in both). The winner will receive an autographed copy of the book “How to Get Organized Without Resorting to Arson” by Liz Franklin. Such a great title for a book! Liz books provides a step by step guide to clearing your desk (or dining room table) without panic or the use of open flame.
April is Master Bedroom month so let’s roll up our sleeves, put on a pretty apron (trust me it makes a big difference!) and get busy.
Yeehaw!
Organizing the dining room
my dining room
Many of you mentioned that clutter was your biggest battle in your dining rooms and so often that clutter is paper. First identify what these sources of paper are and figure out why they are landing where they are landing. It most likely means these things don’t have a home or they do have a home that is obviously not working for you. The easiest way I know how to explain this is to take you on a little tour around my “still waiting to be painted” dining room. Walk with me.
My kid’s papers/crafts always end up on the table. I needed a system that would house the kid’s stuff and where they could have some ownership and pride over what gets displayed. I’m not a big fan of the fridge front being cluttered up so instead the kids have their own magnetic white board on the wall. They also each have their own magnetic clip with their name on it. I just cleared the board off, usually it’s a lot more crowded than that.
So moving around the room, we come to my tea trolley. My tea trolley doesn’t hold tea but it does do a great job of keeping my sale flyers and magazines under wraps. I read my flyers at the kitchen table so it would make no sense for me to store them anywhere else but conveniently there.
Out of necessity for the kids, I also recently purchased the three drawer container (one drawer for each child) to hold the kids workbooks and other miscellaneous things they like to take out to work on at the table. I blogged about it here.
It’s important to remember that different stages call for different systems. When my big kids were younger I found it extremely helpful to keep an art centre on a book shelf in my dining room for ease of use.
Next we have my china/linen cabinet if that’s even what it can be called. Not the most attractive but it fits the space and works for us now so we are making do.
This is the only designated spot I have for these things so if I purchase something new, something else has to go. It wasn’t long ago I organized my table linens in the bottom of the cabinet and you can see that here.
If you are working at getting your dining room organized this month, follow my PROCESS steps and concentrate on one step at a time. If your plan is to get your table cleared off so you can all sit down and enjoy dinner together again then the next step is to REMOVE everything off that table, SORT it into piles and PURGE what you can. Piles are accumulating on your table because they don’t have a home somewhere else. Give those things a home that is accessible and easy to use.
Storing things where you use them really is the key to maintaining a system. This post of mine talks a little more about systems and how do go about setting them up in your dining room to control the paper clutter.
Once you get your systems in place and find a home for everything let’s not forget one other very important factor. Discipline! Taking 5-10 minutes each night before bed to quickly put things back where they belong will go a long way to keeping the clutter from accumulating on you and becoming an overwhelming mess.
Related posts:
Controlling paper with a hanging paper organizer ~ so smart and easy!
Clutter Free Eating Space ~ Professional Organizer Marilyn Bohn
What’s your dining room dilemma?
Well it’s backwards Works For Me Wednesday which means it’s my turn to ask you a question! Since we are discussing dining rooms this month, and by dining room I mean wherever you eat (or are suppose to eat) whether it be a formal dining room, casual dining room, eat in kitchen, bar stools ponied up to the kitchen counter or the floor, I want to know all about yours.
Tell me your dining room dilemmas, what type of dining room do you have, what works for you, what doesn’t work for you, what causes you the most stress? Don’t hold back now, whatever you want to tell me works for me.
Consider this part of my research for what I’m going to post about over the next month. Isn’t that great how we can just go round and round like this helping each other out, you fueling my fire and me giving you the opportunity to tell others that you really know someone who is a genuine freak and you’ve even commented on her blog! (Hint, hint….you want to be able to say that don’t you? LOL)
So let’s hear it girls, the floor is yours…..
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