Monday's Wise Words on a Tuesday

Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do, or Do Without.

This short but sweet mantra is the title of a post on Danger Kitty Designs' blog. She may have got it somewhere else or it may be her own words. I don't know, but I like it.

The husband and I were talking about commercialism the other day - a convo brought on by the ever-intriguing Super Bowl commercials. We were just commenting that all the stuff we want is the result of marketing and watching the lives of people we know. Nobody wants to believe that advertising affects them, but it totally does. Specifically, we were frustrated by the new Pepsi Max commercials - which are genius as far as marketing goes...Rule 1: be funny by showing stuff that has nothing to do with the product so that people will relate the product to laughter and fun. Rule 2: use every gender stereotype you can fit into 15 seconds to make your audience feel like they need that product to be a man/woman. Men would never drink diet (after all, dieting is a woman's issue) soda...so we've made Pepsi Max! We have no idea what's in it or how it's different from Diet Pepsi other than the color of the can - but we've laughed and been shown that it is, in fact, a man's drink. There you go.

I can make fun of it, but the fact remains that when I see, I don't know, 800 commercials a day (I don't really know, but a lot) plus bus ads, billboards, radio ads, magazine ads, and so on and so on - how can it all not affect me? I don't mean to pick on Pepsi. It is my preferred cola.

I digress! Sometimes it just helps to have a reminder that we have so much more than we need and that it's ok to not always get what you want. Like most people, I didn't truly have an appreciation of this until I was grown and feel sort of a sense of irony that here we are in a recession and my mom and grandma are SO depression-era mindful. Will my kids think I'm nuts for saving everything, too?