Organizing Your Home: The Dining Room

Depending on the amount and type of use your dining room experiences, organizing this room will either be a quick one or will require some creative thinking to return it to its original namesake: the dining room!

To begin with, let’s take a quick look around. Do you eat in here often or is it only for guests? If you don’t use it often, you may just have some simple organizing and dusting to do.

Since it is designated as the dining room, it most likely has a table in it, right? If so, what condition is the table currently? Are there papers on your table? Is this table a collection spot for things you want out of your way and then promptly forget about? If so, take the initiative to clear it off!

Consider using the “laundry basket” method here by doing the following: if there are things that don’t belong in the dining room, put them in baskets and then take those baskets to the appropriate rooms where those items do belong.

Next on the list is that storage unit often referred to as the China cabinet. If you have something in which you store things, how does it look right about now? If you find it stuffed to the gills, start by taking a hard look at what you have, how many place settings you have, and how many you need. If you want a guideline, take one from the line in “Sleepless in Seattle”: “12 is too many, 8 is too few. 10 is just right.”

How many creamers, sugar bowls, and teacups do you have? Are they collecting dust and never getting used? Pare down and give them a quick dusting with your duster.

When you open the doors to your cabinet, do you wonder if something is going to fall out onto the floor and break? It might be worth your wile to consider giving your surplus dishware to a newly-married couple that can use it. Or you could donate it to a women’s shelter or other worthy charity. Once you have cleared the space of all those items, give it a good dusting with a good furniture polish, including the front of your cabinet.

Let’s now turn your attention to the lighting fixtures. Is it found to be really dusty? If so, go grab your duster and dust the table, the chairs (rungs and bottom of the table, too!), along with the lighting source. You don’t have to take it down and scrub it clean—just dust it, and if necessary, shake the dead bugs from it.

One final step in this cleaning and organizing exercise. Take your vacuum cleaner and do a general cleaning throughout the floor area. Don’t worry about the edges, just vacuum the “middles” where you walk. Move the chairs but not the table; and don’t even think about pulling out the china cabinet! If there are things behind there, they’re small and no one else is going to see them anyway!

Good going! You are now the proud owner of a cleaned, organized dining room! Maybe it’s time to invite company for dinner now and enjoy the comments they will make when eating in such an attractive room!

If you want to read more on getting your home organized, click here.