The Fall home organization challenge is going strong, and this week I’m focusing on the dining room! Lots of memories are made while gathering around a table for the holidays, so it’s the perfect time of year to get this room ready for family and friends! Can you visualize yourself hosting the perfect meal, in a beautiful dining room, with everything you need at your fingertips? Not so much?? Okay then, let me help you organize your dining room for easy entertaining!
Table of Contents
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Use the 6/P strategy to Organize your dining room
I use a strategy I call the 6/P Process. Just remember the following words that start with the letter “P” and you will have your dining room organized and ready for fabulous meals! Prepare, Purge, Polish, Personalize, Place, Put back.
Prepare
Bring a trash bag, a cardboard box, and a laundry hamper into the dining room. Completely clear your table and then you’ll be set up for the following categories:
- Trash
- Donate
- Relocate
- Replace
Purge
Remove all items in the dining room and put them in one of the four categories:
- Trash goes in the trash bag.
- Place any items you wish to donate or sell in the cardboard box.
- Put any items that need to go into a different room in the laundry hamper.
- Place any items that need to stay in the room on the table, putting like items together.
Polish
Use a top-down approach to deep clean the dining room.
Personalize
Answer the following two questions:
- How does the space need to function for my specific needs?
- How can I make the space more visually appealing?
Place
Do each of the following steps:
- Discard the trash bag
- Take your cardboard box to a donation center of your choice
- Relocate everything in the laundry hamper to the room it belongs in.
- Place everything on the table back in the dining room in an organized manner.
Put Back
If you want the dining room to stay organized, you must train yourself to put all items back in the place that you designated for them!
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How I organized my dining room
An organized dining room makes entertaining so easy. The key is to have all of your serving dishes, table linens, and table accessories nearby. When it’s time to entertain you’ll know exactly where everything you need is located!!
China cabinet
I recently painted my china cabinet and I am so happy with how it turned out! I’ll be sharing how I did it soon!! The cabinet is perfect for storing all of my china and other items I use when entertaining.
In the bottom half of the china cabinet, I store all of my glass serving dishes.
I keep all of my napkin rings in one of the drawers!
In the other drawer, I store cloth napkins and table runners.
Bar cart
I have this cute cart set up in the dining room as a small bar. We rarely drink alcohol anymore, but we do like to keep it on hand for guests.
On the top, I typically keep wine glasses, a bottle opener, and an ice bucket.
We keep most of the liquor on the bottom shelf with highball glasses.
Butlers Pantry
I decided to add my butler’s pantry to this post because I mainly store items for entertaining in this area.
On the counter, we have a small wine frig and our margarita machine. Nothing like a frozen drink on a hot day!
In the top cabinet, I store the rest of our glasses for serving liquor. The top shelf holds serving pieces that I rarely use.
I keep my cake knives, serving spoons, ladles, and scoops in the left drawer.
In the right drawer, I keep a wine bottle topper, straws, salt for margaritas, and wine glass charms, and recipes for favorite drinks.
I keep all of my chargers, placemats, platters, and teapots in the bottom cabinet.
I hope my strategy and tips help motivate you to organize your dining room making holiday entertaining easy for your family and friends! Just imagine how much less stress you’ll have getting ready for your holiday meals since you know exactly what you have and where it is!
Blessings, Donna and Rich
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More organizing Inspiration
If you’d like to see other areas of our home we’ve organized, take a look at the posts below:
- How to Organize a Master Closet on a Budget
- Simple Solutions to Organize Your Master Bedroom
- Easy Tips to Organize a Kid’s Bedroom and Closet
- Great Ideas to Organize Linen and Cleaning Closets
- Simple Tips to Organize and Clean Your Car
Get the look
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You are definitely ready to kick off the season of entertaining, Donna! It all looks so good. I love how you have everything broken down with the 6 P’s! It’s so helpful and the perfect way to keep it all decluttered and maintained too. Thanks for all the helpful tips and tricks, CoCo
Thanks, CoCo! I love to entertain during the holidays and having well-organized spaces makes getting ready so much easier!