Day 22 of the Decluttering Challenge: Dining Room

Today we are decluttering our dining rooms, just in time for Christmas.

We are rolling right along in this thirty day decluttering challenge. I cannot believe it is already day twenty-two.

My dining room is a busy place because we only have one dining area. In fact, I do not remember our dining room ever not being a busy place. Even when we had two dining areas, we still relied heavily on our “dining room” for doing projects, playing games, building Lego sets, eating, and doing homework.

Focus on your dining room surfaces first, and then if you have time you can head into your drawers and cabinets.

Even if you do not have clutter like I have, you may have jam-packed cabinets that could use some relief. Never be afraid to give away pieces from your china cabinet that you never use to make room for the pieces that you love. It will make everything in your display shelves fit and look better.

Sometimes we get burdened down trying to keep everything anyone ever gave to us, but all you need to keep is what is meaningful or useful to you. There will be other gifts, and there is no way to keep them all. Some of us have small houses, and that is okay.

If you are like me, and your family actively uses this room, just work on making it a happy space, with room to breathe and eat and be happy.

In the video, I show you my dining room before and after the solid thirteen minute decluttering session. I meant to do ten minutes, but well, you will see in the video.

And once I finished decluttering, I shoved the fruit basket back to the side and wrapped presents. Gift wrapping is one task that has to be done while the kids are at school!

Before:

I always forget to take a before photo, so I took this one from the video. That’s why the photo quality is poor.

And After:

Again, this is our one eating area, and I am very happy with how it turned out. I prefer table cloths over place mats because our family of six uses this table constantly, all day long, and we cannot keep place mats in place. They shift and always look catty-wompus. Table cloths are not easy to keep in place either, but if they move a couple of inches it is not even noticeable to me and it is still functional.

Christmas decorations at our house tend to be low key like this too. Our rooms are all tight, and if we add too much it feels cluttered and overloaded to me. I did a little more in our last house because it was more spacious.

Merry Christmas, y’all! I hope you get some decluttering done today. I’m including the printable and the link to the 30 Day Decluttering Challenge page in case you need it.

Click here to visit the 30 Day Decluttering Challenge Intro and Day One. It also has links to each day of the challenge.

Hope to see you tomorrow for day twenty-three, kitchen cabinets and drawers!