Gosh, it's been awhile!
With the settlement date being so far away, I kept forgetting about the house. Of course, a simple look around our rented accommodation would quickly remind me- a main task for the Christmas break was to pack up anything we wouldn't need for the next two months for an easy moving day and, for the most part, it worked. We now have a room full of boxes (of the organised kind, which is better than how some of the boxes had been previously, containing a mishmash of things from my Big Move two years ago) and overflowing bags of both rubbish and donate-able items. It's felt refreshing to cleanse myself of the clutter.
The other thing that quickly reminds me about the impending settlement date is the stacks and stacks of home and garden magazines I've bought over the past few months. I love them! I love the glossy pages and the great tips and most importantly I love that I can cut them to bits and paste them together to form mood boards for the different rooms in the house.
My favourite so far has been one called 'Your Home and Garden' which is a NZ based magazine (compared to most which are either Australian or British- it's fun to look at the British ones and see how they're recommending snuggling by a fire, when we're having 30 degree heatwaves this time of year!) and is aimed at the average home buyer- no $8000 designer rugs in that magazine!
Not only are the magazines helping me out with colour schemes, but they're also giving me ideas on how much renovations are going to cost- which gives me something to aim for with my savings. I've already mentally moved 'do up bathroom' to the top of my list of Big Things To Change (of which there are currently 5 main headings of varying degrees of difficulty). My Big Things To Change list is mainly things I can't do on my own, so I feel pretty good about there only being enough to count on one hand!
Still, nothing can be done about those things yet, so I'm turning my attention to paint charts and picking out whiteware for now.
In less colourful news, I had my umpteenth meeting with the bank today, this time to talk about insurances (not as horrendous as I'd imagined) and interest rates (not as low as I'd like, but then again it'd be impossible to be as low as I'd wish for!). Fantastically, though, I realised that by paying to the mortgage the amount I currently pay in rent, I'll be paying the whole thing off eight years early (and of course saving an absolute tonne in interest)! So that was very exciting. Of course, then it brought to mind just how old I'll be in twenty two years time (fifty two! I can't imagine myself as being fifty-two! I can barely imagine myself as being thirty and I'm halfway done with that age!) but, my like Scarlet O'Hara, I have determined not to think about that today!
With the settlement date being so far away, I kept forgetting about the house. Of course, a simple look around our rented accommodation would quickly remind me- a main task for the Christmas break was to pack up anything we wouldn't need for the next two months for an easy moving day and, for the most part, it worked. We now have a room full of boxes (of the organised kind, which is better than how some of the boxes had been previously, containing a mishmash of things from my Big Move two years ago) and overflowing bags of both rubbish and donate-able items. It's felt refreshing to cleanse myself of the clutter.
The other thing that quickly reminds me about the impending settlement date is the stacks and stacks of home and garden magazines I've bought over the past few months. I love them! I love the glossy pages and the great tips and most importantly I love that I can cut them to bits and paste them together to form mood boards for the different rooms in the house.
My favourite so far has been one called 'Your Home and Garden' which is a NZ based magazine (compared to most which are either Australian or British- it's fun to look at the British ones and see how they're recommending snuggling by a fire, when we're having 30 degree heatwaves this time of year!) and is aimed at the average home buyer- no $8000 designer rugs in that magazine!
Not only are the magazines helping me out with colour schemes, but they're also giving me ideas on how much renovations are going to cost- which gives me something to aim for with my savings. I've already mentally moved 'do up bathroom' to the top of my list of Big Things To Change (of which there are currently 5 main headings of varying degrees of difficulty). My Big Things To Change list is mainly things I can't do on my own, so I feel pretty good about there only being enough to count on one hand!
Still, nothing can be done about those things yet, so I'm turning my attention to paint charts and picking out whiteware for now.
In less colourful news, I had my umpteenth meeting with the bank today, this time to talk about insurances (not as horrendous as I'd imagined) and interest rates (not as low as I'd like, but then again it'd be impossible to be as low as I'd wish for!). Fantastically, though, I realised that by paying to the mortgage the amount I currently pay in rent, I'll be paying the whole thing off eight years early (and of course saving an absolute tonne in interest)! So that was very exciting. Of course, then it brought to mind just how old I'll be in twenty two years time (fifty two! I can't imagine myself as being fifty-two! I can barely imagine myself as being thirty and I'm halfway done with that age!) but, my like Scarlet O'Hara, I have determined not to think about that today!
