Has a set table become a lost art in your home? How far do you take setting the table on a daily basis? If you eat with children or alone, do you not bother?
During January, the number one viewed article on this site was viewed over 900 times. More than anything else, my visitors want to know How to Set the Table for Tea. And this got me thinking. Do we know how to set the table in general? Do we even take the trouble anymore?
There’s a book I sometimes pick up at the library called, The Art of the Table: A Complete Guide to Table Setting, Table Manners, and Tableware
I have set the table with my basics (I’ll list them out in a minute) since my children were very young. Yes, it was discouraging when they sat at the table for two minutes, and then got up taking the tablecloth with them. And yes, because we use real silver and china, my boys (who were not born in a barn, but do have that testosterone-split brain) can make so much noise clinking and dropping their silverware. No, even my husband does not always put his napkin on his lap or keep his elbows off the table. So why DO I bother?
I bother because preparing a table for the five and us and sometimes others to gather around is one of the daily art forms I can easily practice. And I’ve noticed that each step I add (lighting the candles, choosing a tablecloth, etc.) does increase the pleasure and enjoyment of the guests, even if on many nights its only me.
I did not understand this at twenty-four when I married and “registered” for wedding gifts. Nor did my friends at the time who didn’t purchase from my Macy’s list for the most part. I learned about the art of the table from my mother over the last fifteen years. I watched her appreciate what she inherited from her aunts and slowly gather the glasses, linens, plates, etc., that she loved. And as a woman now in charge of her own home, I greatly appreciated her efforts to dress the table when we went for a visit. Thankfully, I came to appreciate it enough to begin accepting items from my husband’s and my grandmothers’ homes when they passed on.
But it’s a process. I put beautiful teacups worth a pretty penny from my husband’s grandmother in the dishwasher many times before I knew better and of course they cracked. I’m still working on laying out cloth napkins instead of paper (they’re never ironed, you see, because I hate to iron.). And I let my children eat off and load the dishwasher with our wedding pattern that are now discontinued and cost $55 a piece (in other words, should I not do this?). However, most nights at The Wellspring when we gather for dinner I:
- light unscented candles. It is winter, so they’re spread throughout our dining/living room combo.
- use a tablecloth or cloth place-mats.
- turn on some background classical or Celtic music.
- help my six-year old set the table with her great-grandmother’s stainless steel silverware.
- serve the food restaurant-style instead of family style. In other words, even if we’re only having tacos, they’re assembled in the kitchen, no one is passing around the Cost-co size vat of sour cream to each other.
So how about you? How often do you set the table in your home? Do you think it’s even necessary? What are your basics for a set table? Please feel free to share your comments below.
Over the last few months I’ve made a more concerted effort to get my family to sit together at the table for dinner and actually set the table rather than use it as extra storage. Right now I use plastic place mats-the 2 yr old always wants to paint with food on the cloth ones-my regular plates and silverware. My only resolutions for this year are to make myself a proper afternoon tea and to have at least one family meal worth pulling out the good china for at least once a week. So far I’ve been pretty good about doing both so far and what I’ve noticed is that we’re starting to really connect with each other in a more real way as opposed to just giving each other a daily “to do list”.
I think the issue goes much further than the table being set or not. Many families do not even sit down together at dinner. I have dear friends who have always worked and who simply serve the kids at one time, herself at another, her husband at another. This is so discouraging.
Our family times at dinner are precious and wonderful. We have been temporarily in a small trailer (for the last 4 years) and I am longing for a dining room table where we can all sit down and eat “family style”. LOL To address your sour cream issue, we can put the sour cream in a pretty container instead of the storebought, labeled, plastic.
In the meantime, our family still sits down together every night. If hubby is working late, we will sometimes wait until 7:00 or 7:30 so he can sit with us. We are going to get a “temporary” addition on our trailer. One of the biggest delights will be moving our dining room table (13 feet long with extensions) from my husband’s office, to our home! I WILL be taking the China out of storage and we will be using it every night.
We just now started setting the various eating areas (a kiddie table for four, a kitchen table for three, and a high chair for one) Your site was the inspiration along with a prompting from the LORD. We weren’t setting the table because we are unable to all sit together. Our trailer kitchen is too small for a dishwasher, so we DO use paper plates whenever we can, although I do not like it. Right now, we are teaching our 2 and 4 year old how to set the places with forks, spoons, and knives, as well as folded “paper” napkins and glasses. This all gets me so excited for that second “trailer” to be tacked onto the back of the first, and a handy dandy walkway over to the dining room! OH! What fun our family will have. Candles, YES! Tablecloths, NO! (The table is 5 feet across and simply HUGE) Matching serving dishes, YES! And most important of all, our family sitting together and sharing our day, our laughter, our love! INSPIRE ME SOME MORE TEA PARTY GIRL! Bring it on!
We occasionally eat at the table for lunch, but more often, since it’s just my husband and I, we find ourselves eating in our comfy chairs in the living room. So instead of setting the table, I set our “lap trays”, with a paper towel or placemat under each plate (good stoneware – never paper), a silverware setting laid out neatly on a paper towel or napkin to the side (hubby doesn’t like cloth napkins, and I’m just as happy not to have to launder them), and a fruit cup of some sort at the top. If we’re having soup or something liquid, it goes in a bowl that is placed on a matching or complimentary plate…everything looks just like a normal table setting, just carried on a tray. I love dinnerware, and the only way I can justify having it is to use it! I probably shouldn’t admit that I often match the colors of dinner to the plates/bowls I serve it on. I dish everything up in the kitchen, and serve our meals “restaurant style”, since that works easiest with eating in our chairs.
So our table only gets set when we have people over (or for the occasional lunch for the two of us)…and then I do it up “in style” for our guests. Since we don’t have children, there’s really no need for us to “sit up” to dinner every night (we always eat together and talk while watching TV anyways), but I still make it as visually appealing as possible. 🙂
I admit – our household has slipped from this habit. We used to be much more disciplined. Now, or table is more of a book shelf.
You’ve inspired me to commit to nice tables once again!
Ah, the table setting. I just changed my table cloth and centerpiece yesterday. Not too fancy but it is there.
My handsome man sets the table for me while I get the food together. He often serves the salad if I am not done yet.
I don’t allow the television–we usually light candles and get to discuss the day’s events. It isn’t a huge ritual–but it is one that many people have abandoned.
The way I show I care is in the food and details, the way he shows he cares is to handle the clean up.
Granted, I had to remind him to wait for me to sit–and sometimes he forgets his manners and I have to remind him.
We use silverware–not stainless, and plates from France. And, although I don’t iron them, we use real cloth (or unique) place mats and cloth napkins.
It is a wonderful habit to have.
Hi,
I love your post. We (family of 7) set the table with a tablecloth and cloth napkins every night. It doesn’t feel like dinner otherwise. I do serve food family-style with the food in bowls and platters so that children learn how to ask and learn how to pass things at a sit-down dinner. No containers on the table. Everything is put in a bowl, plate, or platter. It’s a lot of cleanup but it looks nice.
There are just three of us, but we’ve always been committed to a family dinner. As our son grew and we had to deal with practices, games, etc, we still insisted on family dinner. We usually use cloth placemats and paper napkins, the stainless I’ve had since I was in college – I bought one setting at a time because that was all I could afford. I still love it. We have coordinating (but not all matching) dinnerware. I use what fits what we are having to eat. We sometimes do restaurant style and sometimes family style. I would buy tablecloths for our table, but we are soon switching from a rectangular one to a round one, so I want to wait . . . . . We aren’t all the way there – no candles – but we DO eat together, we’ve set the table before hand, and we talk together.
My three year old got to blow out the birthday candles on his cake this year and now everytime he sees a lit candle he thinks he’s supposed to blow it out! LOL! No lit candles on the dinner table for a while!
On weekday mornings for breakfast and evening for supper, we sit in the breakfast nook. The round table is covered with an oilcloth, and we use placemats both, to protect the wood. We have one course, but I do clean it up and make it look nice, with an informal center piece.
On Shabbat (Friday night), we have a formal dinner in the dining room. I use special china and silver, cloth table cloth and napkins. We use crystal wine glasses and pretty stemmed water glasses.The center piece is the Challah board and Shabbat candles. The dinner is three or four courses: Soup and/or salad, fish, meat and dessert. During this dinner, we linger, we talk, we study some Torah, and we sing songs.
I think it’s nice to have such a dinner each week, and it’s good for my husband and the kids to get washed up, dressed nicely if casually, and to practice for formal manners.
You know – I NEVER set the table – atleast not yet. But I’ve got a new outlook on my home – and making it a nice place to be – and so…. this was a very timely post for me.
btw… beautiful setting pic you have.
I am a piler, so it is easy to have a mess on the table and shove it aside for dinner. That is not a good feeling. I learned after looking through magazines that having the table ALREADY set makes the house look “dressed,” and I will have to find some other place for starting a pile. I am learning to dress every flat surface that tempts me – so that I will be encouraged to keep it pretty. We can set the table with dishes clean from the dishwasher, and it is ready for the next meal and lovely. Also – a houseplant as a centerpiece if that is all you have is still nice.
Good morning:
Thanks for contributing this post to this week’s Carnival of Family life, hosted at Health Plans Plus!
Here’s my response: I refuse to answer on the ground that my response will incriminate me. 🙂
Be sure to stop by the Carnival tomorrow and check out the other wonderful entries!
JHS, Esq.
Colloquium
if i make a big meal i try and set the table up really nicely. my mom made me some tablecloths for Christmas this year, so now that the table is covered, its less likely to gather a bunch of ‘junk’ or at least more likely to get cleaned off if it does. most days of the week, i try and get the hubby to sit at the dinner table. if we’re having a pizza or if he’s had a hard day, i let it slide. one good tip is to put out a salad or say a cup of applesauce for kids for a palate ‘prepper’ at the table before dinner. over the last year or so we’ve gotten much better about saying a prayer, i would go ahead and wait until after this little precourse and when you set the main plates pray. its kind of odd, but at least if someone is starving they will have settled down enough for the prayer before the main meal. and hey, they’ll get a fruit serving for the day… umm.. let’s see, usually i set it according to what is needed. for instance if we have something to be buttered, i’ll put out a knife, but usually only one as there are 2 of us. we can easily share a knife. for environmental purposes we have ditched styro/paper plates for 99.9999 to infinity of meals. we still have some in the cabinet but we dont really use them ever. if we have a veggie (oops i forget) then i dish them up into pretty bowls sometimes. i cant wait for a real house to where i can get my china out. i havent used it yet. my mom has some from japan that dad sent her while he was overseas. she left it in the attic for over 20 years and finally decided that she’d use it for special occasions. it’s so delicate. ours is more.. robust less frail. she’s very careful with it, as she should be. i think that with ours, once i have a place to keep it that we’ll use it a lot. its only things and things can get broken and replaced… two tips for those out there confused. eat from the outside in with silverware (salad fork is on outside and is smaller than regular fork as you eat salad first), and forks go on the left, everything else on the right. makes it easy enough to remember. fork and left have four letters.
We recently began setting the table a bit nicer for supper, because my oldest daughter has really taken an interest in it. She’ll do the tablecloth and candles thing. Everyone loves it so much. We use paper plates to cut down on dishwashing, but use pretty serving dishes OR do the restaurant style thing you mentioned. I love that!
Thanks for the ideas!
We set the table for pretty much every supper. My five-year old daughter loves to help and I’m teaching her about which side the knife/fork goes on and about turning the cutting edge in towards the plate. That’s one thing that irritates me. The cutting edge facing out. I’ve thought about getting into cloth napkins but haven’t yet. I think family meals are so important, it’s too bad that has fallen by the wayside for so many.
I like this post. I’m going to go and read about setting the table for tea!
Honestly, this is one area I need to improve in. I keep telling myself that my excuse of “We need two more chairs for the table” so we can all five sit at it (we currently have 4 chairs) is good enough reason to split up at the bar and the table or whereever else we might land…horror of horrors – the living room. Thanks for the beautiful reminders.
Thanks for the post! This was just the kick in the pants I needed to finally get my clutter off the table. We eat on half of the table, and the other half has turned into a catch-all for stuff like mail, you name it. I feel so much better having my table cleared for eating only! I need to go get unscented candles as well, I love having candles lit at the table. Although, like Teapriestess we also have a toddler who loves to blow out candles, so this will be a new challenge!
This is exactly the post I need to read. With four young sons & one on the way I need to civilize them! LOL!
Thank you so much for joining in. It means so much to me.
Love, Fussy
Thanks for the encouragement! This weekend I made a point of cleaning up the clutter in the kitchen and I was able to have tea with a friend this afternoon and dinner with my husband with beautiful flowers (from him) adorning the table–no mail, junk, etc. in sight. It feels great to have a clear area to set a table. Now I need a table cloth to fit my table–it’s a round table with a leaf extension, so it’s not quite oval. Anyone have suggestions for how to cover it?
I never, ever set the table properly! 😛
It’s because of a youth trauma I have, *lol* My parents are italian, so VERY much into the whole ‘this is supposed to be like that’ thing.. my mum always made a big fuss about setting the table properly, even if we had sandwiches for dinner!
So when I got married and moved out, I was finally set free of the evil table setting habit.. whoohoo..
Now, that said.. we don’t eat with a plate on our lap in front of the TV either.. I do set the table with napkins (paper!) silverware (only the pieces we need though.. no fork & knife when we’re having soup!) and plates which are already assembled.. I guess the only thing I really leave out is the tablecloth.. I hate tablecloths.. brr..!
Just found your site. I am looking for new ideas for a tea party. I have enjoyed giving these intimate small parties with my friends for years.
We have always “set” the table for a feast no matter what we are serving. This is a gift you give yourself and your children. When children grow up it is very important for them to know how and why something in being used at the table. Cloth tablecloth, placemat and napkins (clean of course) are always used. Decorations or candles to suit the time of year. Think ST Patrick or Easter. Use what you already have.
A well set table will begin to groom your children. They will appreciate it later when they visit friends homes or have friends over. For those that want to start serving their families with a real meal with real plates, glasses, etc. Take small steps.