diff --git a/bumblebee-status b/bumblebee-status
index 41e8636..e3fe4ca 100755
--- a/bumblebee-status
+++ b/bumblebee-status
@@ -10,27 +10,12 @@ import bumblebee.output
 import bumblebee.input
 import bumblebee.modules.error
 
-# taken from
-# https://stackoverflow.com/a/42146082
-# seems an excellent solution to me
-class SmartStdout:
-    def __init__(self, encoding=None, org_stdout=None):
-        if org_stdout is None:
-            org_stdout = getattr(sys.stdout, 'org_stdout', sys.stdout)
-        self.org_stdout = org_stdout
-        self.encoding = encoding or getattr(org_stdout, 'encoding', None) or 'utf-8'
+try:
+    reload(sys)
+    sys.setdefaultencoding('UTF8')
+except Exception:
+    pass
 
-    def write(self, s):
-        self.org_stdout.write(s.encode(self.encoding, 'backslashreplace'))
-
-    def __getattr__(self, name):
-        return getattr(self.org_stdout, name)
-
-def set_defaultencoding_globally(encoding='utf-8'):
-    assert sys.getdefaultencoding() in ('ascii', 'mbcs', encoding)
-    import imp
-    _sys_org = imp.load_dynamic('_sys_org', 'sys')
-    _sys_org.setdefaultencoding(encoding)
 
 def main():
     config = bumblebee.config.Config(sys.argv[1:])
@@ -85,9 +70,6 @@ def main():
             time.sleep(1)
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
-    if sys.stdout.isatty():
-        sys.stdout = sys.stderr = SmartStdout()
-    set_defaultencoding_globally('utf-8')
     main()
 
 # vim: tabstop=8 expandtab shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4