I'm proud to report that the kitchen table is STILL clean. Here was my secret. We have a new table and I've kept a tablecloth on it because I was paranoid about scratching it. Really, we've had it like 5 months and never used it "bare" because I didn't want to hurt it. Eventually when my dad was over for dinner two nights ago I said, this is silly, if it gets scratched a little we'll live with it. So we ate on placemats and it really looks nice.
So I left it that way. Now we won't put anything on it because we don't want to hurt it - and it looks nice. So if I leave it like this, maybe it'll stay clean!!
In other news, I set up a three-shelf unit by Bob's dart area and got the whole dart area all organized and cleaned up. I did a bunch of other cleaning in the basement (including steam cleaning the carpet, mentioned elsewhere). And I got some areas of the kitchen cleaned up. So I'm making real progress!!