First: a confession/realization. I am managing to make a dent in the presence of physical things in my life, but one look at my internet habits of late reveals that my mental habits are truly all of a flustery-whir. I am certainly a sucker for shiny, funny, informative and well-designed digital distractions of the photographic, listo-graphic and wordy sort that one may find in droves on the interwebz.

I’m pointing at you, Google Reader! Oh, help me! I’ve only had it for two days and have discovered that putting all of one’s webby distractions in one place makes them even more distracting! It used to be that I’d forget about this food-blog or that stupid-photo-blog for months on end until some random evening, when I’d suddenly remember it, surf on over an waste an hour or two reading back through all the posts I’d “missed.” One or two hours, that was it, and then I’d probably forget about it for another month or so. But now – ooooh now! As soon as I remember a blog I add it to my Reader, and after only two days of remembering and adding (and combing through Bookmarks, which are a whole ‘nuther fish for lightly sautéing) I now have enough blogs lined up that I need only wait around five, maybe ten minutes and BAM! – I suddenly have four new posts to read through. I could quite seriously sit around all day, being constantly fed some kind of entertainment/stimulation/information/curiosity from the shadowy, tentacled reaches of the blogosphere. I can feel their dark presence now, out there, somewhere in space, with some fanTAStic new lolcat to show me… Why, oh, why have I fallen into this trap? Because I am weak – no! Don’t spare me, friends. I am weak, indeed.

Secondly: penance.* In which I will try to streamline my internet absorbency, but will also administer myself a non-digital challenge, thus emphasizing the importance of promulgating** the wholesome benefits of Less to all corners of my life. Ironically, I discovered this challenge whilst distractedly perusing the blogosphere this afternoon. (.:ducks barrage of rotten tomatoes and cabbages:.)

I’ve long felt the absurdity of being a slave to products. I haven’t worn makeup since high school, except when I need it on stage. I haven’t worn perfume since high school either. In college I cut off all of my hair so that I wouldn’t have to bother with styling products. Also, for some time now, I’ve been increasingly bothered by what I’ve heard of the toxic contents of most commercial beauty products and how the FDA simply has no regulatory effect on any of them. Luckily, I found this website, by Skin Deep. It’s a database of nearly every product on the market rated according to it’s toxicity in several different categories (allergies, cancer, horomones, etc). Great! Now I have an easyish way to immediately sort through the beauty products that I have, regardless, accumulated in my makeup-free shorn-haired life.

But not only that, I also discovered these (what I consider) revolutionary concepts:
“Going ‘poo-less”
and
The Oil Cleansing Method

Never buying shampoo again? Yes Please!
Never buying face-wash again? Sign me up!
And here, the gauntlet is thrown down. I will try to adopt these methods of washing my hair and face naturally, thereby ridding myself of these plastic-bottled products – maybe for good!
Now, I’m simply not going to rewrite everything I’ve read from the above blogs (and the nearly two-dozen other blogs they led me to!) about natural hair- and face-washing. I will simply say this:
Read it. It sounds awesome. And I’m going to try it.

And yes, I will write to you about it after some period of time that I have yet to determine. Probably a few weeks, from the sounds of everyone else’s experiences.

So I guess the moral is to keep chugging; keep digging around in those grimy little corners of life in which I never even knew I was over-doing it; in which I could possibly save even a little more money and have one or two less things sitting around on a shelf or in a basket. There will always be more to cut back on, of course, but the key thing I’m striving for is balance. And if I try these new personal-care thingies maybe I can at least restore my pH balance…

Goals in summary:
-weed out the blogs, for the love of Pete
-simplify (and cheapify!) the beauty products

And now it its time for lunch.
~Angela

*by “penance” I guess I simply mean “beefing up my efforts,” since I think you’ll agree that this isn’t exactly a punishment.
**for Andrew, my personal spellcheck/thesaurus/dictionary with a pulse (and lovely hair).