Good luck with your cleaning, and just remember, if it benefits the reader, leave it. If it benefits you, don’t.

The clock came with the theme, and I just really like the look of it. It’s pretty. Dumb, I know, and I’ve debated taking it down.

The graphics in place of words in the sidebar are for two reasons:

1) to call attention to those particular words, and
2) to show what fonts the theme uses as accents in the navigation bar and whatnot.

I really want a drop box for the tags and the static pages, but I’m probably gonna have to make those myself. I hate the lists. (The tag cloud was worse, though.) I just haven’t gotten around to digging up the code for the dropboxes to declutter the menus.

I’m a big fan of cross-indexing, and intend to do a full-fledged index by topic when I get time. And I also like a little bit of aesthetic appeal over plain and monochromatic. That’s just me. And the blog needs to reflect me, and speak TO me enough that I want to be here myself. I’m a right-brainer. I need to feel the zone. lol

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Everyone has their own view on what is clutter and what isn’t. I decide based upon what serves the reader most, not me. For example, a calendar doesn’t help. It helps you, the blogger, because you remember when you posted something, but visitors don’t know that, and readers rarely remember. If you are telling a chronological story, the order of when each section appears is more important than the date.

Mood icons, too many words in titles in the sidebar, over use of bold and italic, the login meta data stuff, submit links, and buttons and icons replacing words where words would actually be clearer than the graphic replacements – all are considered by many to be clutter, but others find justification. It’s up to you to decide what clogs up the process of getting the readers to your content, and speeding up the page loading. Readers know the difference and appreciate it when they are directed to the content first, stuff later.

I’m glad you are learning this same thing. It’s important to set an example on such a worthwhile site. Thanks!