If you think Erin is mean, you haven’t been around the Interwebz block. I’ve seen flame wars that would turn your hair white.

Lately, when I see something I don’t agree with, I’ve been better able to hold my tongue, or at least to try to express my confusion as to how a featured product could help people who are trying to unclutter their lives. (The recent post about the cat litter robot comes to mind.) But I’m not always careful, and I should do better to keep in mind that this blog is about uncluttering, not frugal living. I think the 2 concepts should go hand-in-hand, but not everyone is always on the same page.

So that’s my explanation, but it’s no excuse for being offensive. I’ll reiterate my apology — I shouldn’t go around making the site unpleasant for the authors and readers!

I think this blog sits between demographics. On the one hand, it will attract Gen X and Gen Yers like myself who consider themselves “lifehackers” trying to make their lives more productive, easier, and more streamlined. These people understand you because, well, we are just like you.

On the other hand, it will attract matronly housewives looking for hints not unlike Martha Stewart’s and Family Circle’s intended audience. These people, it seems, have difficulty catching the subtleties of internet humour (or irony, for that matter), and will find something as innocuous as the Unitasker Wednesday posts offensive. How these people would react to Gizmodo, Collegehumor, Explosm, 4chan, or any other dark corner of the internet is beyond me and well worth an academic study.

I basically believe that advertising has an effect. For the same reason that watching a lot of tv with fast food commercials mixed in tends to make people eat more fast food (and you can maintain that it doesn’t hold true for you, but there are pretty clear studies that say at least on a population level it’s true), seeing a lot of ads for random stuff you don’t need, particularly from ‘trusted’ sources, tends to increase the likelihood you’ll buy extra stuff.

Now, I’m not saying that there’s never any need for stuff, or that you should never post reviews on a site like this. What I am trying to say, though, is that there’s a cost to having too high a proportion of posts that serve, in practice, as advertisments for products – particularly products that may, on a slick blogpost when someone with authority in the decluttering world says “this is likely to help make your home more attractive and functional, just like mine!”… but which, once you get them home, are likely to actually just end up sitting around, taking up space.

Where this balance is probably varies from person to person, and perhaps I have a smaller home and just less space (or money) than most people on here, pushing my line further towards “I need to just have less stuff – not fancier and more expensive ways to arrange it”. But, for me, at least, I have been finding that while I like the idea of the Unclutterer blog – in practice, the biggest effect of reading it seems to be having to catch myself thinking “oh, hey, that looks like a nifty gadget that might make my life nicer!” more often than I do when I don’t read the blog. For this reason, I’ve been leaning towards cutting it from my RSS feed.

Clearly, that’s fine. If most people want to have more reviews like this, then I should just go ahead and cut it, and everyone else can keep reading – and that’s probably what will happen. But since I figured if I ran a blog like this, I would want to get feedback as to why people who were initially very excited about the blog found themselves frustrated by the blog and/or left, then it was a nice thing to do to pass along similar feedback myself.

That’s all.

(for context’s sake, I didn’t complain about the unitasker posts – I just left a comment on the little illuminated circles post suggesting I thought it was something the site ought to be more likely to discourage than promote)

Smart consumerism is about buying what YOU need or want to achieve a remarkable life. If someone chooses to buy a Unitasker, it’s because they have decided for themselves that it is a smart purchase. We don’t know their situation or their reasoning, but we trust that people are using their best judgment.

As far as hypocrisy goes, our readers (thankfully) aren’t in the habit of buying the items we poke fun at in the Unitasker Wednesday column. My guess is that we’ve made a total of 30 cents in two years from people buying Unitaskers. Refunding that money would cost more than the 30 cents.

I’ve found that the vast majority of opposition we’ve had to Unitasker Wednesday products on the site that may be beneficial to someone with a disability are from people who _don’t_ have disabilities. This is nice, that there are people out there taking a stand for their fellow man — but it isn’t always necessary (or wanted). Anyone with a disability who is able to hop online and read our site, has the ability to voice his/her concerns if he/she has any.

If you’ve watched any of the videos of me on this site, you probably haven’t even noticed my disability. Very few people do, and I’m always amazed. You can learn more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidermolysis_bullosa

“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”

Benjamin Franklin

That said, though, I’m with Gayle that I think Unitasker Wednesdays often hit the wrong tone. (And I don’t think anyone should tell her to shut up and leave if she thinks so. Sheesh! People and their unprocessed hostilities!) And frequently, that tone is “Who could possibly need this [because I don't]“… which kinda misses the first point: people’s needs differ widely.

At worst, it can become a textbook example of ableist discourse — “Everyone has the same abilities as me.” Search for “disability” and “disabled” in the archives and Unitasker Wednesday frequently comes up. Usually it’s in a comment, either someone going “I understand these might be useful for someone with a disability, but…” or someone objecting along the lines “Um, this is meant to be an assistive device.”

I totally understand that Matt et al. absolutely don’t mean to disparage anyone with a disability. Of course not! But seriously, if you suspect an item might be marketed towards the elderly, the disabled, etc. to make their lives easier, really don’t make a post about it saying or implying “Are people so lazy that they can’t X for themselves?” Even if you post a disclaimer — if anyone has to post a disclaimer along the lines of “I understand that someone with a disability might…”, it’s the wrong product. Choose a cheap plastic howler like motorized spin-the-bottle that’s of no use to anyone. (Those are funnier anyway!)

[Sorry, that's bugged me for a while. I'm not disabled, myself, but as I learn more from friends active in disability fields, I realize how easy it is for us to unintentionally promote the dominant narrative that people all have the same needs and abilities, or that there's something "lazy" about having to use a device to do something that "normal people" do without effort.]