I hereby declare this house organised.

I know that I can be hellish bad at follow up posts. Ones which talk about know how I went with the tidying, or if I actually sold the child on ebay etc...

So here we have it, a follow up post.  There's a lot of good news :)...

Firstly, I was talking the other day about getting the house straight and organised before we hit the Christmas holidays, and also that the Universe had conspired against me every time I tried to do anything.  Well, the Universe did not stop conspiring, it never does, BUT I did manage to get the house in order and organised by Miss 4s party on Sunday.

It was a struggle.  It was boring and fricking hard work, but as I sit here, and things are in order (yes, there is a bit of random untidyness and the dishwasher needs unloading and the clothes need hanging out...) I really feel that the huge effort was worth it. I've got a sense of having things under control for the first time in weeks.

So the house is orderly. What of our finances...

As most of you know we've struggled with credit card debt since our annus horribilius last year, when we had a long period of no income.  We arrived in 2010 in arrears to practically every telco and utilities company in Australia - and, can I just add, we were really up front about our situation and our plans to pay what we owed and they were all great about it - this is in addition to a maxed out credit card.  Since then we've worked hard to dig ourselves out of that hole - which has also been horrible and boring and stressful and awful.

We've paid off debt as fast as we can, so by the end of July we were straight with everyone except the rates bill and the Credit Card.  I had set up a payment plan with the council and we had a schedule of payments organised for the credit card, and it was looking like we'd be debt free by March 2011.  But hubs did his tax and the refund exactly covered the remainder of the credit card and the amount owing to the council.

So, as of yesterday, we have no debt aside from the mortgage.

It doesn't feel real yet.  I'm so used to stressing about money that I'm automatically worrying about the cost of a celebrationary afternoon tea at T2.  Hubs is in dire need of new jeans and I have a pretty desperate bra situation happening - but a part of me is refusing to believe that its going to be okay to spend money on new clothes.  I'm pretty sure I'll get over it :).

One thing I am totally sure of though, I never, ever, want to go through it again.

:)