Flowering hot spot

Wekends, in our household, are regularly used for catching up with what Flylady likes to call Mount Washmore- the week´s laundry, and sometimes that of the week before that, too. I don´t like wasting detergent, water and energy on running half-empty loads, so I allow enough laundry to accumulate for doing full loads. While the washing machine is running, I tidy up the living room and clean the floors.
The worst clutter offender in our living room is paper, namely, DH´s papers- I have, by now, gotten into the habit of regularly filing my incoming paperwork.
That wasn´t always the case- tax day, for me, used to mean having to plough my way through a landscape of paper mounds in search of the items I needed. Finally, I gave in and purchased a filing cabinet with vertical folders which are now holding the paperwork. One side effect of this was that I did finally start to consider whether a certain piece of paper was really worth keeping- it´s a rather smallish cabinet with just one drawer, and putting everything in there without culling would fill it up pretty fast.
And that filing habit has paid off nicely several times already- when they stole our license plates, or when we had to take the bill from the radiator repair on our car to claim the guarantee, I had the pertinent documents within a matter of minutes, instead of after an hours-long search.
DH, on the other hand, is a definite keeper when it comes to paperwork. He likes to pick up catalogues, and keeps each and every piece of information that enters our place. Thus, any horizontal surface in the living room is fair game for putting papers on. In regular intervals, I try to get him to declutter those, but success, up to now, has been limited. As I don´t think he´s likely to change, I am trying to find a decorating scheme that would prevent the accumulation of paper on those flat surfaces.
And I think I found something. We have a round table that used to be the primary paper hotspot, being situated right behind the living room door and therefore the first flat surface encountered when coming home. This weekend, I took all of the papers that had accumulated on it and dumped them on DH´s desk. And then I took a pristine white tablecloth, spread it on that table, and put a vase with a single yellow silk rose in the middle.
As per today, it´s been working: no paperwork dropped there any more.
Now I am thinking about what I could do with the other flat surfaces that looks as good and keeps the papers contained.


Julia