Pinterest. A Treasure Chest or a Junk Drawer?

I've been working in the playroom lately - it's my current #letsroomtogether space!  Well, technically, we're supposed to be working on a bedroom but, that's where we are headed with this room so it counts.  *high five*  Our kids have been sharing a bedroom for the past 2+ years and we are just now getting to the point where the twins could use their own space with a little bit more privacy than sharing a room with your little bro affords.  So, they're taking over the shared bedroom and we're moving S (6) and G (4) into the playroom, soon to be bedroom.  And then eventually, G will probably move back in with the girls when S needs his privacy and we'll be back to the drawing board.  We'll have kids' rooms to design for years to come.  Yippee!  They're probably my favorite spaces to design.

There's not much to write about as regards progress because really, I've just moved all of the toys to the middle of the room and started painting.  Nothing really fun.  I can't even say it's looking more like a bedroom.  But I can say it's turning the corner to looking more fresh.  To be honest, my plan wasn't even to paint this room yet.  It was to figure out how to separate and purge the toys and move one set of bunk beds in.  But, you know, you get the ball rolling on changing a space and, well, if you know me, aesthetics always somehow get involved.  Hehe.  So, we have yet to purge a single toy and move bunk beds even an inch BUT there's fresh paint going up.  I'm always a glutton for more work if it involves a fresh design.  ;)

This is the realtor's photo of the room when we were courting the house:

When we moved in, we basically tossed all the toys in and stamped it "playroom".

We knew eventually we'd want to repaint the trim - it was a glossy ivory/cream and was freshly painted before the house was listed but we wanted it to match the rest of the crisp white trim in the rest of the house so we had cohesive going on but doing anything to this room was very, very, very low on the priority list.

But, as it turns out, when it has to warp into a kids' bedroom, priorities get bumped up.  Things get planned, stuff moved around, trim gets painted all of a sudden...

And the walls get edged and ready for fresh paint to be rolled on.

You go scouring Facebook marketplace for clothing storage, finally pull that paper lantern out that you bought for cheapo moons ago to finally use it, and your wheels get spinning on how to make this the cutest boy-girl shared room ever.  Which means, if you're anything like me, one of the first places you go is to pinterest dot com.

It's a treasure trove of inspiration, no?  Maybe a little too much at times if you're also anything like me and ideas snowball until they're spiraling out of control and you can't nail down just one idea that's swimming around because they're all so good but you only have one room and and and...

All of a sudden, Pinterest becomes a junk drawer.  It's filled with all these things that had value at one moment in time.  Enough value that they were too good to pass by or throw out but not enough that they were imminently useful so they got tossed into a drawer just in case they'd one day be useful again...never to be seen again because "out of sight, out of mind" is a REAL thing.

That's what Pinterest can very easily become.  This is what it became for me.  If you have a few thousand pins, it might be hard to admit and I really hate to say it, but that's probably what it is for you.  It's nothing more than a place you go to scroll, feel a few sparks - "Oh my gosh!  What a genius idea!" *pin it*  "That pot roast looks AMAZING" *pin it*  "Her outfit?  Perfection.  I need to copy it." *pin it* - scroll, scroll, scroll, pin, pin, pin some mo aaaaaand...never see those pins again.

Right, but who cares?  I know.  It sounds really dumb and honestly, it is dumb.  Who really cares what your pin boards look like, right?  In the end, yes.  In the grand scheme of things, Pinterest matters zero percent.  But if you're anything like me and you really value the inspiration you find there and you actually want to take them to the bank, you're going to have to clean up your act or else it'll just become another monotonous scrolling monster and a total waste of your precious time here on Earth.

Here's where to start...note that I'm no pro on how to tame this beast of an inspiration site so if you have more tips, I'm all ears and eyes.  Also, just for simplicity purposes, I'm talking about personal Pinterest boards.  I know there are businesses/brands that use Pinterest primarily to drive traffic to their site and that's a whole 'nother ballgame unrelated to personal use.

1)  Purge your boards.  Chances are, some of them are holding things that fall into the same category and therefore, can be merged.  You don't need a board called "Recipes" and a board called "Good Eats".  If both contain pictures of things you'd happily shovel down your throat, you can happily shovel them all onto one board.  If you like your foods to be separated by meal time, keep them in the same board but make different sections within that board.  Pinterest makes sub-categorizing easy!

2)  I use Pinterest mostly to glean inspiration on how to make our house a home so, to help me actually use it for that reason, I've created a board for every room in our house.  If something peaks my interest, I pin it to the board for the room it would work in and then, at least, all of my ideas for that one room are in one place.  These aren't all of my boards but here's a handful with the room-specific boards littered in-between:  

When you're tackling a project (or a whole room!), you know have a place to go where you can find all of the ideas you love and it'll all be there, ready to inspire you again.  It's motivating to see it all and get working!  Here's a glimpse of my board for this boy/girl bedroom we're working on:

This system has been awesome for me and very helpful but things can get digitally cluttered real quick unless I...

3)  Review prior pins!  I started pinning to room-specific boards on Pinterest when we were living in our second house and so many of those boards have pins that were great for rooms we no longer own.  It's good to go back into those boards and delete pins that either a) don't apply anymore or b) aren't as appealing as your taste once thought.  It's surprising how much changes over time, especially as regards personal opinion on home aesthetics.  Chevron was once a big hit in the design world and I loved it but that trend has all but faded and so has my love for it....I've moved on to dots!  Haha!  So, those chevron rugs I pinned for our old living room and that chevron fabric?  Pins of them no longer apply.  They needed to be set free into the pinterest ocean deep.

4)  Jot down notes on your pins!  I feel like Pinterest is making this harder to do but...add a note to the pin - why you like it, what in particular you like about it, where/how you'd use that idea.  It might come in handy later when you're looking through pins and serve as a good reminder.  If you try a pin, Pinterest makes it easy to comment your thoughts.  Doing this will remind you that "Hey, you tried this and here's what you thought!"

I really love Pinterest.  It's my favorite social media platform by far because of it's awesome lack of selfies...and maybe that's just because it's been curated over time to fit my home decor standards but still.  Ha!  It's so much more than a platform.  It's a tool and a good one and I don't feel like I'm wasting my time when I'm scrolling like I do other platforms.  It takes a little bit of time and effort to keep it organized and working for you but it's worth it for those diamond ideas...that are more likely to become reality if they're not drowned in a sea of "sort of" meaningful pins.