You would have had fits at our table growing up. My mom is/was incredibly disorganized and a bit of a packrat, and it was reflected in every flat surface of the house.
Buried somewhere at the center of a large round dining room table was a big lazy susan - originally meant for salt, pepper, condiments, etc, but it eventually ended up with a paper napkin holder…a shoebox filled with meds…a stack of plastic throwaway cups (which my mom washed and reused for years).
All around the table…on the chair seats…stacks and stacks of magazines, books from the library, the mail delivery…really, anything that needed to be dealt with between that day and, well, the end of time, really.
When we were all home, it wasn’t that bad, because there were always 7-9 people eating at the table for any given meal (Mom rarely ate with us, she served and ate by herself afterwards), so no room to pile this or that on the table “just for now.”
Once kids started leaving home, more and more stuff got stored there, and when we’d eat, I’d have to shove a pile of this or a stack of that to one side to make room for my plate, and it was like that right up until they went into care.
