They Will Eat Your Brains!

Magazines! I am guilty of falling prey to magazines. I flip through them to read this or that article, trying desperately to ignore the ever-present advertisements telling me that I'm not pretty, young, thin or stylish enough. I even (drum roll) subscribe to one of them. Or, I should say, I did subscribe to one of them, because I have decided to have a magazine-free life from now on. I temporarily deluded myself about the magazine I subscribed to in a couple of ways. I told myself it was different from other women's magazines...it wasn't all about fashion and celebrity gossip. But in some crucial ways, it is exactly like other women's magazines. Particularly in regards to those ads I mentioned up there. The ones that constantly tell me there's something wrong with the way I currently am....that I should be on the constant look out for opportunities to spend money on improving my appearance and style. To that I say a great big phbbbbbbbbbbtht! To put that into actual words, I reject that mentality, and I feel mentally healthier for it. I also fell into the I-will-want-to-look-at-this-article-again-someday trap. And that's the one that leads to clutter. Gasp. Shudder. Not to mention, I never actually go back to those articles. So, to avoid mental and physical clutter, I am banning magazines from my life. No more subscriptions and no more stacks of clutter - they're all heading straight for the recycling bin.

What's New, Pussycat?

In my journey for simplicity, I've noticed how much clutter is going on not in my home, but in my brain. I absolutely adore technology, but I think I'm guilty of using it to become over-informed about meaningless things. How much do I really need to know about some celebrity's wedding or a basketball player's career moves? How does this affect my life? Do I need to send a gold-plated, forty-eight speed blender with a personal chef attachment to the couple in question? I sure hope not. I feel like I don't spend enough time with the people that are dear to me, so why am I wasting time finding out about people I don't even know? Well, in this line of thinking, I have made a minor change in my life. Previously, I had a CNN news feed on my google page (which gets checked with embarrassing regularity). Well, CNN pays an awful lot of attention to celebrity news, and tons of meaningless headlines were sucking up my valuable brain waves. No longer! At the suggestion of a friend, I have changed my news feed choices to NPR and Discovery News, and, already, I've noticed a fabulous difference in the quality of information I'm soaking up. Surely, this will lead to more interesting dinner conversation than the latest Britney/Jessica/Lady Gaga/*insert today's celebrity here* debacle.

In other news, the bathroom de-clutter went fantastically well. Not nearly as scary as I had built it up to be. ;)