One of the many things that annoys me to no end is the "tips" section in magazines such as That's Life and Take Five. While these are delightful publications and I always flick straight to the "secret story" where readers divulge their sneaky or mean confessions; the page that is dedicated to household tips is inevitably a waste of resources on which they could be printing more secret stories.
I must emphasise that I have nothing against tips. I love reading little snippets of information, despite their consistent irrelevance to my life or any task I may undertake. But, the problem with the majority of these tips is not that they are irrelevant, but that they are utterly useless. Most are devoid of any practical purpose, and the rest are so obvious that anyone who cannot come up with these solutions themselves does not deserve to know them. And then there are the ones that end up costing more money than they aim to save, rendering them completely futile.
The editors of these publications need to seriously question what kind of tips they include. While some ideas, such as rubbing half a lime on your forehead to cure a headache, have merit in that they are original and in some way useful, even if this is just due to a placebo effect, other tips are counterproductive. Like craft projects. I HATE CRAFT PROJECTS.
Around Christmas time, magazines boast "creative and original" projects that you can make yourself and give as gifts to save money. Not only are the results, even in the glossy, doctored photos in the magazine, ugly; they are also unwanted. Nobody wants your stupid home-made soap or hamper full of home-made delectables or knitted baby booties. They are ugly, fulfil their intended purpose with limited efficiency, and take you hours to create. After you have bought the materials, made a prototype, then painstakingly conjured up your final product, it will probably end up costing you more than buying the recipient a real present to start with. If you factor in the cost of your time, then your fugly "original" Christmas presents turn out to be even more expensive. And did I mention that no-one wants them?
Another culprit is "fashion" projects. Teen magazines typically feature some sort of way of defacing perfectly usable clothing to add your own flair to it. They will instruct you to "take an old tee shirt and buy $30 worth of buttons, sequins, and pom-poms and stick them all onto the tee shirt with craft glue, in the shape of a puppy". For that price, you may as well buy a top that actually looks good and that you can put through the washing machine without having to glue all of your decorations on again. And there's the matter of locating an "old tee shirt". A top becomes old once it is worn out, or no longer fits right, or has some other fault. At which point, it is time to throw it out, not keep it so you can glue stupid pom poms on it and make it look even worse! Also, once an "original" craft project has been published, everyone knows about where you got the idea from and do not think you have amazing fashion sense because you can copy a step-by-step project from a stupid teen magazine. It's like wearing the "free gifts" like stupid headbands and whatnot that they give you, or buying all of your clothes from Supre. You just don't do it! Why? Because you look like a consumer-whore douchebag!!!
Craft projects and household tips are utterly useless. Anyone who ACTUALLY uses them should find better things to do with their time, and come up with some ideas of their own.
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