The Footnote the bane of my writing..

Yes, it happens that there are people that do not use footnotes in their essays. Now I used to be one of those people I wrote without a single footnote, but eventually my Comparative Religions professor protested and forced me to write Footnotes. Okay, well I did that but than the most horrible thing happened I started to use Footnotes to supply information that was either unimportant or just something that would have fit in the text a quite well.

It is easy to fall into that trap since it sometimes seems so much easier to use footnotes instead of integrating everything fully into the text. Yet, it is also important to retain footnotes for information that absolutely does not fit into the text but is still important to support your thesis.
The best rule that I have come across in this matter is very simple basically if it fits into the text write it into the text otherwise evaluate the information you intend to write into the footnote very carefully and ask your self if this piece of information is really necessary. Otherwise it is up to the judgment of your self and of course the judgment of your Professor and other readers.