Hi friends. Welcome back to the challenge! This week, we are moving out of the kitchen and concentrating on dining room organization. Hopefully you are progressing and seeing a positive change in your home. With the kitchen & pantry now complete, it’s all downhill from here. If you don’t have a dining room, focus on the area around your kitchen table.
If you’re new to the challenge, print out the schedule and checklists below and begin on the current week. For encouragement, join our Home Organization Facebook community to share your progress, or struggles, or questions. Or simply look through the photos and read how others are doing.
PRINT –> Free Challenge Kit
If you want a companion guide to our challenge, purchase The Complete Book to Home Organization. It includes all 14 weekly challenges as well as a ton of inspiration and tips about the spaces we will be organizing. No need to log onto the computer for ideas, this manual has it all!
If you need more guidance on cleaning your house, be sure to order the sister book The Complete Book of Clean. It has tons of tips and checklists that will teach you how to get your homes sparkling clean.
Organizing the dining room is a pretty simple process. If you have a hutch or buffet table, you can easily create a functional space. If you don’t have one, you can use a dresser. The most important thing is to designate a piece of furniture to store everything and completely empty the space.
PREPARE
- Gather 4 bins, one for each of the following (Keep, Donate, Trash/Recycle, Other Room).
- Go through everything on the table, buffet, drawers & shelves, dividing into 4 categories. Purge as much clutter as you can. Place the bins in another room until you are ready to re-organize.
- Once you have gone through everything, the room should be empty (besides the furniture). Give it a good cleaning! Scrub the floors, table, chairs, baseboards, buffet, mirrors, windows, etc. Clean it all!
It’s time to go through everything in the “keep” category. Put the other boxes where they belong. When organizing, go through one item at a time – placing into categories (in drawers, baskets, shelves, etc). Below are some examples of categories you can use to store things in a buffet or hutch.
- Disposable dishes (plates, cups, napkins, cutlery)
- Napkin related items (cloth napkins & napkin rings)
- Place mats
- Table Cloths
- Beverage drawer
- Seasonal linens & placemats
It has taken several years for me to fall in love with my dining room. After changing decor, furniture, and organizational aspects, I finally feel good about it. You too can create a space that’s visually appealing and implement organization that works for your family. Here is what I did…
THE CHINA CABINET. A hutch or china cabinet is an essential part of dining room organization. It houses all of the entertaining pieces we use, extra candles, batteries, and so much more.
I collect white dishes, Rae Dunn pieces, and vintage hobnail and display them with joy inside of this china cabinet.
BUFFET TABLE. The buffet table is another wise decision when it comes to dining room organization. I store our table linens, placemats, napkin rings, and more in these drawers. Not only is this piece great for organizing, but you can use it to house your food platters during meals.
Here are a few blog posts that will inspire you to get started in your dining room.
2. Organizing Heirlooms & Collectibles
3. Decorating the dining room with silhouettes
Sort through your dining room this week and implement some organization. Purge all of the things that don’t belong. Follow the step by step process I’ve laid out for you. Make sure to set up organized zones for better functionality. (You can find the zones I use in my book). Try not to get side-tracked and don’t move ahead until you are completely finished with the space. Share your progress on Instagram using the hash tag #abfolchallenge, blog about the weekly challenges, and share your before and after pictures over at my Home Organization group here. Hold yourself accountable and finish all 14 challenges! I can’t wait to see what you accomplish. Good luck. I’ll see you back next week for the week 4 challenge. Happy Organizing!
~Toni
Disclaimer: You may find Amazon affiliate links within this post. Thank you for your support to A Bowl Full of Lemons.
Tags: 2018 Home Organization Challenge, dining room, dining room organization, home organization, organization, organize
2018 Home Organization Challenge, Blog, Dining Room, Organize Posted in
11 comments
11 comments on “2018 Home Organization Challenge Week 3: Dining Room”
I love your dining room!!! The table is marvelous 🙂
Toni –
What a beautiful post and what beautiful photos (I’m sure it might be a little easier to get those beautiful photos with the beautiful subject matter that you have! Love the space)
Your organizational challenge seems so organized! What better person than you to follow to get the task done.
Thank you so much for sharing.
Have a wonderful Saturday,
Jalon
Absolutely beautiful! Our dining room is just a small nook in our current apartment, but this post gives me so many great ideas for when we have a bigger space to store fun things like napkins, table accents and special occasion dishes! Pinning it for the future – thanks for sharing! 🙂
So inspiring. I noticed that your scentsy type melts all look like the same scent. I’m curious which one(s) are your favorite ??
I love that you use your drawers in the dining room for useful items, I do too. I have noticed that many people have half empty drawers in the dining room and it seems like such a waste of space.
I have a hutch in my living room. I have some glass serving dishes and nice china inside. For the time being, I also store my girls’ arts and craft supplies inside the hutch. I have organized all of the hutch expect for the drawers. It feels good to have most of it done. My goal this year is to organize and get rid of what we don’t need.
Great tips. Thank you for that!
It is such a delight to look at pictures of well-maintained homes. That China closet is beautiful and so practical at the same time. It is a good idea to categorize things in order to de-clutter the kitchen . For the cutlery part, a separate category should be made for breakable and non-breakable items to avoid losing special chinawares.
Hello Toni. I loved your book complete Book of Clean so much that I had to buy the Organization book as well. Very well written and smart easy layout. I like a clean home as well but you included many things I never thought about…cleaning the whirlpool tub jets for example. Fantastic. I was wondering if you could share with me which microfiber towels you use or like best? I was using Norwex towels but they are not compatible with cleaning products. Thank you.
This whole organizing idea is so amazing. Glad you have shared it with everyone to read. Regards!