Reclaiming My Dining Room from Clutter

We rarely use our dining room. One reason is that we don't have "fancy" dinners......ever. The primary reason that we rarely use our dining room, though, is that it had become a dumping ground for boxes of school-related books and materials. We have a wonderful closet in the dining room that had been taken over by school-related books and papers. I really wanted to clear out that closet to make room for some overflow items from the kitchen. Every time I looked into our dining room, I felt overwhelmed and defeated.

Well, the dining room organizational project was a massive project. It took a full week working in there every day to finish the project. The hardest part was making decisions about what to do with so many books and papers. I put a LOT of old papers into paper recycling. For example, I decided that saving my daughter's third grade math tests was enough. I didn't also have to save two full binders of worksheet pages! I gave away all of the preschool/learning to read materials that I had to a friend who still has little non-readers. Everything else was organized by category in the curriculum closet in the school room.

I am so very happy about the way the dining room looks now! The closet is cleared and the room is so pretty and neat. I am planning to have one "fancy" dinner with candles in there once a month just so we can enjoy the room a bit!

I am hoping to finish the organizational projects in our kitchen this week. I have already worked in the kitchen quite a bit but I still have a lot more to go! If you would like to see how other bloggers are busting clutter, check out The Happy Housewife's Itch to Pitch Challenge at the link below:

http://thehappyhousewife.com/itch-to-pitch-ditch-the-old-clothes/