My Kitchen Table

My kitchen depends on flat surfaces.  Around the perimeter:  a microwave which the instructions say not to pile things upon but shelves beneath, a plastic file cabinet, a wire cabinet, a rolling wooden island, counters in an L-formation, our refrigerator's top, a wooden cabinet in a nook, and a yellow metal rolling cart.  Moving inward, we have a kitchen table, four dining chairs and one other chair.  And that's only the visible flat surfaces, not counting the floor.  Cabinet and pantry space further expand where we can put things.  And we have a lot of things to put.  These past few months I've exerted some effort to claiming the island and the counters with some success.  Inroads to controlling the table have proven more intractable.

On many occasions I have tried to recapture control of the kitchen table.  Contents of the flat surface can easily be separated:  my things, wife's things, paper, not paper.  Paper tends to be overwhelming and the project fails.  It fails repetitively.  For now, though, I have my paper in two semi-neat piles and my not paper isolated to two other segments so by setting this as a priority, with the added incentive of being able to use the table for its intended eating purpose, I may get done, but it really has to be a priority.  I tend to do my priorities.