Avoid Having Clutter on the Table in Your Kitchen or Dining Room

The tables in the kitchen or dining area have a tendency to become dumping grounds for all sorts of items. Before you know it, a mountain of mail, schoolbooks, car keys, writing implements, and other random objects will have materialized in some other room of your house by the time dinner rolls around.

If you want to stop this behavior in its tracks, create a designated space just inside your front door to put everyone's stuff. To make it easier to hang up jackets, backpacks, and handbags when you enter, attach hooks to the wall. Just behind the hanging space, on a bench or small shelf, you can put a set of containers with everyone's names on them.

As you go about your day, this will be useful for scooping up stray items around the house. Put whatever you find lying around in one of these bins; then, every night before bed, make it a practice to empty the bins and put everything away correctly.

If your kitchen table also serves as your children's homework or painting space, then you should arrange for nearby shelves, bins, and containers to arrange and store all of your school, office, and creative goods in an organized manner.

You may help your kids develop excellent habits by making it a point that they must put these items away when they are finished with them. To make cleanup a breeze, use plates for snacks and coasters for drinks.

One clever strategy for avoiding a cluttered table is to use a beautifully prepared table spread. Lay down a beautiful tablecloth and set a grand centerpiece on top, or arrange four or six elegant place settings on an unused dining room table.

The presence of other items on these tables will discourage your family from placing their own belongings there. Also, this is the best approach to ensuring that you are prepared for unexpected guests.