I'll admit that we really don't use either our dining or breakfast rooms for actually eating. Well, occasionally I'll have breakfast or lunch at the breakfast room table, but more often than that, it's used for folding laundry.

We're horrible, horrible people: (;-)) We eat on tv trays in front of the gigantic boob tube in the den. Sometimes I'll think about having a nice, romantic, candlelit meal with DH at our dining table, but invariably we decide to watch a movie or a DVR'd show during mealtime instead.

Oh but we do! Now I admit, mainly for entertaining and family dinners, etc. but we do quite a bit of that. Not only that, but I enjoy the china cabinet in there. Since there's only the two of us, it's rare for us to eat in there, maybe a special dinner, etc. but not very often.

We have a table for 4 in the breakfast nook and that's where we eat our meals. Aunt Jen - you are not horrible at all - each to their own, but we are the opposite. Sitting down together at the table each night is something we enjoy. We share our day or whatever else we want to chat about. It's kind of a time to wind down, etc. We're not big on tv anyway, and usually by dinner time, we are ready for some peace and quiet, no background noise needed. Again, it's strictly a personal choice, like my dad says "that's why they make chocolate and vanilla".

I wouldn't want to not have a dining room.

For us it's breakfast and lunch in the kitchen, supper in the family room, and dinner by candlelight in the dining room.

We have 3 kids who are always coming and going, so at dinnertime, even when everyone is here, the kids sit at the island (where we have 3 stools) and DH and I sit at the kitchen table. That way, we're all in the same room, but it kinda feels like DH and I are on a little "date." Anyway, that wasn't my master plan, but that's how it's worked out. Somehow, it seems like a long walk to the dining room, even though it's not! Since we never use the dining room, I'm in the process of converting it to a sorta library/sorta dining room so we can still use it for eating, but it doesn't feel like a "wasted" room during the 360 days that no one eats there!

Our home has an L-shaped "great room", with the kitchen, dining and living areas all open to each other. It is my style of choice. Our dining area has a large table and 6 chairs but easily (and not infrequently!) seats 10. We also have a breakfast bar where the kids eat breakfast and do homework. Yes, you can see my messy kitchen, but our entertaining style is homey and informal anyway.

I'm not a "formal" person, so we don't have any formal areas in our home.

Carrie

We ditched our breakfast area to expand our kitchen. Now we use our dining room for family/guest meals, games & studying.

What Auntjen said. In addition, I haven't met a kitchen/dining room chair in several years that isn't downright painful to sit in for more than about 15 minutes. PO took down most of the wall between the tiny kitchen and DR in order to scavenge a few feet more for cabinets, making sort of a middling-sized eat-in kitchen, but we just crammed a couple of couches in the dining area instead of wasting precious space on furniture that would rarely be used. (We don't have a breakfast nook/bar either.) It's great to hang out comfortably and talk to whoever's working in the kitchen.

No local family so none of those giant holiday dinners for us (thank goodness, I hate them). I was OVER hosting fancy dinners by my early twenties. We don't "entertain" in terms of everyone sitting all nice and- Norman Rockwellish in their places at a table - at As I noted in another post a while back, the last time we actually had a proper dining room set up was two houses ago. It ended up being a staging area for making care packages for my brother's Army unit in Iraq - it was cheaper to buy everything by the case so you couldn't see the table or most of the floor, stuff was piled so thick. We realized eventually that no one had eaten a meal at that table for more than a year and we honestly didn't care. Since then, we've seen no point in wasting space we have to heat, clean, and pay mortgage and taxes on!

We use our dining room for company and Holidays. We play games and the kids and, now grandkids, study there. It has a huge pocket door and a swing door so it's a great quiet place to study.

I host a few committee meetings there too. Members can bring their kids to enjoy a movie while we attend to business.

I'm looking forward to using my DR - as soon as I get all the oak off the rug and up onto the kitchen cabinets! I've had a floor and furniture in there almost a year now, but almost immediately it started being used as a staging area for door casings (still have stock for 2 doors there), baseboards, and for the past 6 months, the crown molding.

My kids have Tgiving bdays, so we plan on having my parents over (almost) every Tgiving, except when we're on vacation or my mom wants to cook the turkey. After so long eating dinner at the "breakfast table" (the kids eat bfast at island, DH skips it, and I eat it standing up), we probably won't use the DR unless there are more than 4 of us. Which will be more often than once a year, but I don't know yet how often my parents will come to dinner. We'll definitely us it in the summer (unless/until we get a deck built with lots of seating) b/c at least 2 of my siblings usually overlap visits each July.

In the last house I had all my scrapbooking supplies laid out on the DR table - but I never got around to actually putting the kids' baby books together, it just laid out collecting dust (by the time I quit my job, DD was a year old, then I was busy with her, and when she was 2 I started designing this house!). Maybe when I get this house finished I'll finish the baby books?

We use ours too. I admit that we mainly use it when we have company (family and/or friends), but we do that quite often. (In fact, I'd better get cracking on house cleaning b/c I'm hosting a dinner Thursday night!) My dining room may very well be my favorite room in the house. I decorated it to suit me (not DH, not the boys, just the lone female in the house, ME). I don't have much spare time to spend decorating, but it only takes a few minutes to change out the centerpiece. I love to do something different every season. And best of all, the kids and their friends do not lounge in there so it doesn't get as dirty as the rest of my house!

If I could design and build my dream home, I'd have an extra large dining room with floor to ceiling shelves on at least 3 walls to serve as a combination dining room and library.

This house only has a dining room which is for the piano. The next house we build will (hopefully) have a second area for the piano.

When we do have guests, we keep things really light and casual so that our lack of formal dining space does not become an issue. Nobody minds. For some reason his family is convinced that I can't cook (no idea why) so everyone is relieved when it is pizza or something from the grill. :OD

Oh Tina that sounds so romantic having dinner at the table with your husband.

At the rate I'm going I will be eating alone at the nursing home calling my cubian nurse Ma Ma.

But most likely Maria and I will be eating in the formal dining room. (lol)

I grew up eating in the dining room-- every meal that wasnt outside on the porch. When I have been in relationships, I pretty much insist on using the dining room for everything other than takeout.

All that said, I do not currently use my dining room. I find it claustrophobic and I rarely have company for indoor meals. In fact, much as I love to cook, I rarely have the time or motivation to prepare anything more involved than a tuna melt or a pot of soup.

Boy, my life sounds pathetic.

Hubby and I used to eat dinner together every night at the dining room table. But then we started remodeling and the DR became the spot for the refrigerator, microwave and toaster oven. These days we eat on the couch, looking at our laptops rather than each other. I miss that and am really looking forward to getting it back.

Of course in our tiny house there is no other place to eat (no bar,island or breakfast nook).

Only this house and my last house have had a room with a separate dining table. In the last house, we had plenty of room in the kitchen for a good table and took all family meals in there. Dining table got used only for company or card games when we entertained. I loved having that space, but it only got used that way when we had others over.

In this house, we only set up the front room as a dining room 3 years ago. So, there was never any 'history' of having one. My DD complains to the skies if I try to serve a meal in there. She says it's depressing. It doesn't seem so to me, but there it is. And without company, the 3 of us eat in the LR with the 2 dachshunds watching us eat and watch t.v. I love having the dining room. And I do think that house layout has a lot to do with how many of us use ours.

Red

We eat at our dining room table every night except Fridays for dinner. That's the only night we eat in front of the tv. It's our Family nite, with a pizza and a dvd movie. We also eat breakfast in the dining room on weekends. It has a big picture window looking out onto our valley and the mesas in the distance. It's pretty and cozy as well. I light candles every evening for our dinner and use cloth napkins, too. I'm probably REALLY in the minority here, but we really do like eating in there. I do have to admit, though, that if we had a table in our kitchen, we'd probably eat our weekend breakfasts there instead.

Oh, BTW, we've been eating weekday breakfasts in our MBR, all together, for the past 26 years, too. (LOL!) OK, now you're really going to think I'm nuts ;^P
Lynn

I don't have a formal DR but wish I did. Why? Mainly to decorate it! lol It would be used occasionally for dinners. We have a round table now but it doesn't extend so when more than four people come over we literally drag another table and chair set from the basement up, slide the other one down and it works. Looks out of the norm but it works. :)

We used the dining room for 26 years until we remodeled the kitchen and added a raised bar. Haven't used the table since. We also have a table on the screened porch, so in nice weather (meaning low humidity) we'll eat out there. When I got rid of the PC and bought a MacBook I moved my computing from the office to the dining room table, so the table's getting used ... just not for eating.

Lynn, I'll bite ... you have room for a table in your bedroom? How nice! What started that tradition?

I miss a dining room. It was where Sunday and all special days. The kids played in the room often, but it was the one room that had to be put back to clean again. It was always shiney thanks in part to the children, as if they were not in good grases for something each had a job to wax or silver to polish. The large table was also great to cut pattrens and sew most of the kids clothes at.

We eat all our meals at a dining room table, but as I live in one big room (3000 sq foot loft) it's hard to say where the dining room is.

Natal, DH is a family practice doc. Right after we were married, it became clear to me that if I wanted to have any quality time with him before he left to make rounds and then head to the office (at 6:30 AM)), I needed to make our breakfast on trays and bring it into the bedroom for him to eat between getting ready, taking calls from the answering service and making patient calls. That way, I could relax and watch the morning news if he had a call to take. When our DS was born, he needed some morning Daddy time (and vice versa), so I propped him up in bed with us. Eventually, he was old enough to sit at the small table in our room and eat his breakfast there with us. When DD was born we did the same thing with her. We only have two kids and they're ten years apart in age, so it worked for us. We like that together time to start off all our days. I think we've all come to value it.
Lynn

When we bought our house it had a small formal dining room and a eat in kitchen (table). It was to small so we tore out the wall and now use that space as a sitting area. We added a very large sunroom on the back of our house, it includes sitting area, desk area and a wrought iron glass top table and 4 chairs. We play cards and do crafts there, whatever. DH made a giant plywood table topper we bring in for holidays and dinner parties, it can seat 10 easily. We adjust the furniture a little and I have a swagged chandelier with 2 hooks that I move into place. It works wonderfully. That being said we usually eat in the den in front of the TV and sometimes at the kitchen table for breakfast, but it sure is nice having that space "to dine" when we want to.

Ditto to Jen and Mari!

Spend most of our time in front of the TV or in front of the two computers in the home office -- especially when we eat dinner .....

Jan at Rosemary Cottage

When the kids were home we used it several times a week, usually on weekends when we'd grill. DH was in law school at night so we all got used to TV trays. And now both dh and myself still use them. I LOVE to read while I eat, and a TV tray is perfect.

Although our DR isn't "formal", we mainly use it if there's a ton of food and lots of people. But I'd never give it up!

Shee, your DR is similar to mine, right off the kitchen. What I did was add wallpaper to one wall to make it appear it's a separate room, plus the chandy above the table. That's one of the reasons I suggested using the paneling in your dr, to set it off as it's own room.

I tell ya what I love. We live in an old farming community, where everyone here (except us, we only have an acre) are farmers. We're surrounded by old but nice, two-story farmhouses. All of the kitchens are built "Walton" style, where it's big enough for a casual DR table, and then they all have a formal DR. And remember, farmers aren't rich either, but they sure were practical when they built their homes!

Gold, when my boys were teens we spent many weekend nights with them and their girlfriends playing Risk and Monopoly on the DR table after a yummy BBQ! How I miss those days!

We didn't build on in this house.

Oh, but we do use our dining room! Frequently.

Not every day for eating, we have an eat in kitchen, but for dinner parties, probably about once a month. It is a great place to spread out the Sunday papers, drink coffee, and just chat and relax. It is also used for playing Scrabble, doing jigsaw puzzles, and the odd game of Monopoly. I use the window sills as my plant "nursery" and the *big* table for cutting fabric, I like to sew.

I love my dining room, because it is almost always tidy, the aforementioned activities not withstanding. :-)

Generally we eat in the kitchen or in front of the tv. That said, when we have company over they typically bring their kids--who join ours to eat in the kitchen while we adults eat in the DR. I love eating there. We replaced the uncomfortable wooden seats with pretty parson's chairs and we are comfortable as long as we choose to stay there! Now, I think I would eat in there more frequently if the floor were hardwoods--carpet is NOT ideal! My LR and DR are open to one another, and I can extend our DR table (with the help of some plywood toppers) to seat about 14 very comfortably. LOve that big space during holidays!!

We use our DR nearly every night w/ candles too. We don't have an eat in kitchen now...got rid of that space when we redid the kitchen 3 yrs ago. DR has a lovely view to the pool area from the windows so it is very pleasant in the evening to turn on the accent lights and have the windows open and listen to the fountain. In nice weather we often eat out by the pool or on the front porch . DR has a fireplace so in the winter it is an additional attraction. W/o a place to eat in the kitchen other than 2 stools that can be pulled up to my work table it has made us very creative with meals. We have breakfast and coffee out by the pool most AM's or on the front porch and I have lunch in the garden somewhere most days...now that I have the glider and the purple table/chairs in 2 different places out back it makes it nice. DH thinks it is fun and always asks " so where shall we sit today ?" More chairs than butts in this house LOL.

We have Sunday dinners in our Dining Room. That's the day we invite our kids, the grandkids and my in-laws for some multi-generation time together.

We invite friends over for dinner at least twice a month and I enjoy setting a nice table in the DR for those evenings.

We also use the DR as a buffet station whenever we have large casual parties. We play cards and board games in there. If we have a Neighborhood Association meeting at our home, we use the room as a "Board Room".

And because of the open design of put DR (only 2 side walls) we're able to expand our table and seat 24 at the holiday meals.

We make good use of the room.

We've been in this house for 26 years and the original kitchen was small and poorly designed with 6 - yep that's right 6 doors or hallway openings. When the 5 of us sat down for meals only the 2 on the end could get up. So we ate in the dining room most nights on a plywood table that DH made until we renovated.

Both of us cook and we enjoy having guests so we put on a large addition and at 30 x 18 my kitchen is the largest room in the house and we love it. It mimics our formal dining room with dark cherry cabinets and Oriental rugs on the ceramic. We usually have all our meals there. We've made lighting the candles and saying grace (or a few woods to mark the day's events) a ritual.But there's still nothing like sitting down as a family for meals in the dining room which now has a real table and china cabinet and using the silver and china. There's a different feeling to using the dining room that makes it special.

But when we designed our vacation/retirement home in the mts. we made a large great room so it's a combination living - dining- kitchen area.

When I was a kid we always ate in the dining room when families use to talk and stay together. I'm sure ya'll remember that too.

.....Jane

We have family dinner together every night in our dining room. Dinner together has always been a priority, and when we remodeled our house, we created a much more welcoming and larger dining room space. It's my favorite room in the house.

Mornings, DH and I have coffee at the island in the kitchen.

When I was a kid we always ate in the dining room when families use to talk and stay together. I'm sure ya'll remember that too.

Our house didn't have a dining room ... just an eat-in kitchen. We did eat all meals there as a family, but it wasn't always an Ozzie & Harriet experience.

Lynn, that was a brilliant idea to keep the family together! And how nice that it continues today.

Oh but we do use our dining room. In fact we use it enough that I have been looking for an easier place to store the table leaves than the back of my closet! We are a chatterbox family, so we always sit at the table for quite a while after eating. It's fun and relaxing. Even when it is just DH and I we sit and visit, and I always set the table pretty. I think he secretly likes it :^)

Funkyart....a kinship here. Always had a dining area, but my little house now has an eat-in kitchen. Which isn't used either...sort of a kitchen island table use and place for all to sit to chat while "everyone" is involved in cooking.

The kids (adults) got used to buffet years ago, our formal dining went by the wayside. There are plenty of options for me if wanting a sit down formal, but no one seems to want it. Maybe they are off of the major clean-up needed and my whining about good dishes not being abused.

On a whole, my life has become very casual. Thankful for outdoor cookouts when a tribe arrives. At least we eat at the table on the patio.

It is great to know so many still have family dinners at the table though. As a kid we ate in the kitchen, but also had company around constantly and the dining room was worn to the hilt. My mom was a social butterfly to all.

DH and I eat brakfast at the DR table on Saturday and Sunday mornings. It's nice to sit there and read the paper and just relax together. The only other time it gets used is if we have company. The rest of the time we sit like slugs at the TV.

I have more tables to eat at than I need- 6 at the moment including screened in porch and outside patio but we usually eat on trays ...in front of the tv. It's just Dh, Dad and me.

However, I'm ready at the drop of a hat to entertain!

Ours is used very frequently. We worked with a designer on our house and as funds were limited, we decided there was not enough funds to build a breakfast nook, bar area with stools and a dining room so we just built the dining room. There is a pass through separating it from the kitchen to give some ambience and separation (and to keep the sight of stacks of dirty dishes from ruining mommy's meal). The kids do school work there (homeschool and because their desks are never clean enough in their rooms). Dh and I often take our breakfast in the living room though, a table for 8 seems to be overkill when it is just 2.