This post is part of Thirty Things That Help.
Spend five minutes tidying up the table
This post is not for the readers with multiple tables, maybe a desk, perhaps an art corner. It’s also not for the readers who clear off the whole table every night, clean it, and set it up all ready for breakfast. I envy and admire these readers and would like some of their extra tables and some of their discipline, but this post is for the rest of us.
For many of us, our ‘dining’ table is also a lab bench, an art studio, a games table, a desk for anyone in the family who has to get work done at home (paid or unpaid). It might be a nature table. It might be where you put precious cards that come in the post so everyone can enjoy them. For some readers it’s a sewing table!
In my case, since we left our furniture behind in England and have only acquired the bare minimum of furniture in the US, the table really is the best place to store a lot of things, because if they’re not on the table they’ll be on the floor. (Anyone in the DC area looking to offload some furniture—I’ll store it for you for free!)
So of course we sometimes take a cup of tea to the table only to find there’s not a square inch of table to put it on. Of course we tell the children to open up their work books, only to discover that they can’t put them down flat.
And although I don’t think there’s anything wrong with shoving everything to the other half of the table so you can eat a meal, or stacking things into a teetering pile so you can do some work, there is some truth to the idea that a tidy desk equals a tidy mind. (Some truth!) It’s much easier to focus on a tricky maths problem if there’s some clear space around you. A child needs a fair bit of physical room to practise neat handwriting. Equally, tidying up your whole table is a daunting task, and you have a lot of other things to tend to. Hence the problem.
But five minutes is doable, and it does make a difference. You’ll be surprised what you find underneath those layers of… of whatever it all is. (My current view: several books that are in current rotation so can’t go back on a shelf, a calligraphy set, the cutlery holder, a pop-up Shakespeare’s Globe, exciting letters that arrived in today’s post, noise-cancelling headphones, some lovely new coasters we found at an estate sale yesterday, a chess board, a US hole punch that doesn’t fit our UK folders… I could go on.)
And even as someone who likes a home full of life and precious things, and has a pretty high tolerance for artful clutter/general mess, having some space at your table is disproportionately pleasing. Possibly that’s because all that newfound space is just inviting you to find something interesting to fill it with. Maybe you’ll sit down and reply to a letter. Maybe a child will pull out the paintbox. Maybe you’ll be inspired to cook a nice meal because you’ve got somewhere to eat it. But even if you do none of those things, a bit of empty space gives you a little bit more room to breathe.
Spend five minutes tidying the table. Your homeschool will benefit, and so will much else.
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You should have taken a 'before' photo too. ;)
Haha I'm glad it's not just me