Making the most of a mess.

This weekend I was able to have some free electrical work done on my house (you can't beat that price).  Naturally, when you have lovely plaster walls (sarcasm alert) they crumble and make a gigantic mess when they're worked on.  The good part of all of this is that it got me to clean areas that normally don't make to the regular housecleaning rota. 

For example, I have a wire shelf next to my kitchen that holds cookbooks, the cat eating area, and  some decorative items. I normally wipe up the cat area every so often but the shelves never get dusted!  I don't know why!  I never even think of them (probably because I don't cook so the books never get touched).  When I had to move the shelf to get to an outlet I wiped down the WHOLE area - fridge and all -- and vacuumed up the dust bunnies, and even wiped down the scroll-y wire on the shelf.  I also took the opportunity to cull through the cookbooks and kept only what fit on the shelf (previously they were overflowing).  I wish I had taken a before shot, but here's the after:

Big improvement (trust me)!  This sounds sort of nerdy, but I also love knowing how clean it is!  It feels good that an entire corner of my kitchen is truly sparkling clean and clutter free.

Now I need to go vacuum up the plaster dust in the living room...wonder what I can de-clutter in there, while I'm at it?