I love how our dining room table looks when it’s clean.

Chairs pushed in and totally clear of clutter

The vase was a Christmas present from Nik’s brother and sister-in-law.  I love the structural beauty of it so I leave it on the table all the time, usually without flowers!

ribbon embroidery table runner from a mountain town on the island of Thassos, Greece

I love how it looks enough that at night, even when I’m tired, I’m usually motivated enough to at least get the dishes off of it and into the kitchen.  This is not to say that I’m always motivated to actually wash those dishes.  But at least, that way, in the morning, we have a clean place to eat breakfast.

photo bomb by Ellie! 🙂

Basically, how our table looks when it is clean is motivation enough for me to keep it clean and uncluttered (most of the time!).  This was not true before I added the runner and vase.  But with those two things of beauty there in the middle, I get annoyed with anything else breaking up the view.

Now, I need to figure out how to make our computer desk beautiful because I have a terrible time keeping that cleaned off!