Dining Room-Step 2 Maintained

Here's the dining room after ONE WEEK of starting and stopping which I blogged about here:
START: putting things away before each meal
START: setting the table for bfast & lunch
STOP: reading at meals
STOP: putting things on the floor (put them away where they belong)

We been doing this for the past week and I'm THRILLED to say that the dining room has stayed clean! This is AMAZING! It is really liberating to know what is in the room...table, 4 chairs, clock, phone, iPod dock/alarm clock and Sarah's new plant, Violet. Anything beyond that doesn't belong and needs to find a place. We use the table heavily all day long (we homeschool) but because we are setting the table for each meal (three times a day Mon-Fri) the room gets completely emptied down to the essentials only!

Right now, Sarah has Black Kitty & Bunny with her all the time and they end up at the table. Since I won't let her put anything on the floor, I have allowed her to have a knapsack on her chair (green) to hold them while she's eating. The only thing I had to pick up for this photo was a cheese stick wrapper that had accidentally fallen on the floor!

I've decided I'm not moving to the next room until this room is D O N E. My next step is to clean out the huge bookshelf in the room and I've received wisdom how to proceed. There are 25 cubbies. I've made a grid and evaluated which cubbies need to be cleaned out because junk is just being stored in those. I need to make time this afternoon to actually do that physical process. Once those are empty I can then move things around so they are in the most convenient place and decide how to use the empty ones (empty!?!?!?) :) John has stuff on the top but I'm not going to require him to move his stuff. For now it is out of the way and although I'd like to really have that area purged, I'm not going to make him do it because the timing isn't quite right for him.

We have lift-off!