Organizational Project: Dining Room

This past Monday, I brought you a dining room project.  When a client has multiple organizational issues in their home, I often start in the dining room if that is one of their problem areas. I think an open dining room table and being able to sit down at the table with your family is very important. With Christmas coming up, I want to make sure that everyone can sit down at their table this year.

As you’ll see, this before dining area was in a much more cluttered state than the previous dining room post:

This client was so frustrated and overwhelmed that she gave up and clutter, dust and pet hair built up. However, one day she decided she’d had enough, she called me and we got started. This project is still in progress, but I wanted to show those that are frustrated and overwhelmed with major clutter issues that it IS possible and small steps can create big effects.

We started with the dining table, going through each item to sort and determine where it needed to go. Most things just never found their way to the trash when they were supposed to.  Once the table was cleared of clutter, we cleaned it.  Then the best part happened:

My client (and I) ate lunch at her table for the first time in YEEEEARS. She and her husband just ate at TV trays in the living room for so long that she didn’t remember when she last even saw much less eat at the table. I was SO excited to share that moment with her!!

Next, we moved on to the alcove area – again assessing the trash from good items and determining where each item would live.  Most things were, again, items that should have made it into the trash but somehow didn’t. Nothing gross, just empty packaging and such.

The next step in the process was to sort the stack of items next to the bookshelf, and then the bookshelf itself. Because my client and her husband use the dining room table for office/bill-paying type things, we created a shelf for the office and bill-paying items, then a shelf for my client’s cookbooks (she’s an awesome cook) and then the bottom shelf for other books she wanted out. The end result gives them easy access to the things they need on the bookshelf, beautiful open space in their alcove and the ability to eat dinner at their dining room table.

Total time: 8 hours split into two, four-hour sessions. The dining table and alcove area were 4 hours, the bookshelf area another 4 hours.

Organizational Project: Dining Room

So often, the dining table becomes the catch-all because it’s there and it’s bare.  People tend to throw things down on bare space instead of putting things away where they belong. It seems easier that way. (I say seems because eventually you have to put it away, in the long run spending more time and energy than if you’d just put it away in the first place.)

In the case of this family, the dining table was easier to work from because it was central to the home and easier to watch their two small children from. They have a home office, but it’s tucked way into the back of the house and became a catch-all room (organization project post on that one to come later). 

For this client, our mission was to find functional homes for everything on the table so they could still utilize it for bill-paying and other functions, but so the family could also reclaim use of the table for its most important purpose – eating!!

Before:

On the table we had important paperwork of the husband and wife’s, school work for the husband, all sorts of decorative bits and kiddie things and magazines. This client loves her magazines! (As so many of us do.)

We started by taking everything and sorting it like with like. From there, we started putting things away where they belonged – kiddo stuff to the respective kiddo room, so on and so forth. We also threw away or recycled the things that were no longer necessary. Afterwards, we took some time to find a good stand that fit in the back corner. Stylistically, it had to mesh with the home’s style, not take up too much room in the corner and be low enough to hide behind the dining table. Functionally, it needed to house a bill paying/mailing station and all of my client’s magazines.  We succeeded and the final results look like this:

Total time: two hours, not including client’s shopping time to purchase the stand and mailing station.

If your dining room table is cluttered, now is the perfect time to clean it off so you can eat at the table on Christmas Day!