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The Pinterest culture and being perfect


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I agree that there's a lot of silly stuff on Pinterest (in large part, I think, because small-time mom-bloggers are trying to go viral, so they create some ridiculous craft or totally laughable list... my favorite recent example was one of "books about strong women characters as a baby gift," which is fine in theory, but seemed to be just a list of random, incredibly-well-known books with female characters.  If someone had given me "Emma" as a baby gift, I would have said thank you and all, but been very confused.  Emma is one of my favorite books, and very funny, but she is an anti-heroine... not to mention that I'm supposed to store this book for the next 15 years, at which point it will probably be kind of yellowing and musty?)

 

So I think that a lot of the Pinterest criticism comes from people who read the snark (and there's plenty, and it's funny), but don't really use it as a tool, and so don't really understand that it's totally what you make of it, and it's incredibly easy to use it a lot while totally avoiding the ridiculous stuff.  And then people who do use it get kind of offended because they feel that they're being lumped in with "45 ways to make silverware out of bark and acorns for your newborn's woodland-themed welcome home gala," which exists in a kind of different universe from people who use it as a personal organizing tool.

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For crafty people pinterest is probably just horrible! They'd want to do it all!!!

 

But for someone like me, I just snort at it all and consider how amazingly ugly it would all look if I tried it at home. I haven't got a crafty bone in my body. Remember all those years ago when we made Scarlet's quilt? I sent in a square. But before I did I laughed until tears streamed down my face. My square was probably the ugliest quilt square Ever made in the history of mankind. Poor, poor Scarlet, having that ugly square on her quilt.

Scarlett scuttles off to look at Gargas square......

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I follow this person who has boards which are titled, "Pinterest, you are drunk" and "Pinsanity":
http://www.pinterest.com/pinteroast/

Now, on the other hand? When we moved here and we were looking for new living room furniture? I couldn't find any coffee tables or end tables that I liked that were not crazy expensive. So, I looked on Pinterest. I found this pin:
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/13510867604871600/

and my hubby made me a table similar to it. We already had the window he used for this project. We've used it in various ways in different homes. It lifts up so that you can display things under the glass.

post-1322-0-44291000-1379113149_thumb.jpg

 

I then found this pin:

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/13510867604872107/

 

and my hubby made me a coffee table with that idea in mind. But, he made an inset area that we put glass over, so it would be smooth and level.

post-1322-0-67051400-1379113276_thumb.jpg

 

I think I've managed to include pics in the appropriate place? 

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Sorry, OP but I just don't understand the mindset.  It's a tool and like all tools, it's neutral.  People react to it how they choose to react.

 

I can't imagine going somewhere like pintrest and deciding it's a negative assessment of myself.  How could a big group of ideas freely explored be personal in any way much less a personal attack of some sort?  So huge numbers of people put up pictures of stuff they've been doing in case anyone with similar interests wants to have a look and be inspired.  So what?

 

I do several types of crafts during some of the stages of my life.  Now I'm back to being able to do more.  I had a bunch of fabric in my quilting stash to use up and wanted to use some quick methods so I looked at pintrest and elsewhere at strip pieced quilts.  It was helpful.  Some were above my skill set and some were too labor intensive.  That's not where I am now.  So?  It's nice to look at then move on to something more realistic for my situation.  No one anywhere was assessing me, judging me, or in any way thinking of me at all.  They just put up some pictures for people to browse if they want.

 

I think there's a similar type of thinking related to FB posts.  Some people choose to detail unpleasant details of their lives to their friends.  Some people choose to keep it light and positive.  They save the unpleasant things for private conversations with smaller groups or individuals in real life.  Why some people go on about how other people's positive posts make them feel bad about themselves is beyond me.  Everyone knows everyone has unpleasantness in their lives.  Choosing not to dish it in (semi) public is just a personal preference and social norm for some, not an intention to make others feel bad. 

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I LOVE it. I haven't bought a magazine (except for Victoria) in a long time (because now I get all of my ideas from Pinterest). I use it almost every day. I pin knitting patterns that I want to make, ideas for kid's presents, gardening ideas. Beading ideas, stuff I want to do in the garden, how to propagate flowers I have...herbology, fermenting foods, recipes according to holidays, new stuff I want to try.

 

It's like the place for the Best Hacks EVER. 

 

And, like a friend says, why glorify the ugly? Don't we get enough of that in real life? 

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I'm not much into the whole mass social media thing, though I do, very infrequently, check up on family and friends through FB. I also have started visiting Pinterest occasionally because some friends of mine have started some just-for-fun stuff (sarcasm, irreverence, and general laughing at selves).

 

I guess there can be uses, as long as one can avoid the landslides of glurge.

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I love Pinterest.  I'm not understanding how it can cause so much anxiety.  Use it as a tool for what you need, forget the rest.  I scrapbook and follow other scrapbookers to get ideas.  We are building a house and I'm pinning ideas of things to buy and how I want certain rooms to look.  It's been great to scroll through my kitchen idea board and see the theme develop.  

 

I use it to save ideas I might want to try, but if I look at a month from now and decide I don't like it, I can delete it.  It's been a great way to clean off some of the clutter that would normally be on my desk -- recipes to try, scrapbook sketches, curriculum to buy for next year, etc.

 

 

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I used to do Pinterest. Sort of. I didn't feel any pressure from it. It actually took the place of that file folder I have that whenever I'd be paging through a magazine and came across something I liked I'd tear it to and put it in that folder. Just a place to store ideas I liked.

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I used to do Pinterest. Sort of. I didn't feel any pressure from it. It actually took the place of that file folder I have that whenever I'd be paging through a magazine and came across something I liked I'd tear it to and put it in that folder. Just a place to store ideas I liked.

 

I still have my folder, but yes, this has taken it's place. 

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LOL!!!

 

This and this are the two reasons I LOVE pinterest. (They are my two boards that I pin to constantly.)

 

Crafty crap? I may pin it here and there, but I'm honestly considering changing the name of that board to 'things I think are sort of cool but will never do IRL'. :D

I do also like it for hairstyle/color ideas (I like switching up colors every few months) and clothes.

One cannot follow me and not see my uh... unique tastes in certain areas. :D This makes me like Pinterest more, actually - because I think it shows a side of me some people have NO idea about. :lol:

I just spent the last 45 minutes laughing so hard I was crying while reading your second link. OMG you have some funny pins!

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http://christusg.typepad.com/thecarlsons/2013/08/just-a-regular-mom-living-in-a-pinterest-perfect-world.html

 

This blog was so right on!  I don't think about Pinterest this way, but I do feel this way about fb.  My friends and I did a "real schoolroom" fb challenge on Thursday, to take a picture of your kids/house while you are doing school so that everyone else could see what learning looks like.  I loved it!  My Pinterest perfect schoolroom that I had  posted a week before school began was destroyed!  There were books all over the floor, pencil shavings piled under the table, babies having a tea party (even though I have banned toys from the schoolroom), phonogram and timeline cards scattered like confetti, and the table was so covered with papers you could not see one square inch!  It was good to see that everyone's home gets messy doing school, not just ours, even though I know that in my head.  

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I used to feel this way about all the perfect homeschool blogs I read and even by posts on this board.  I work outside of the home and I'm not the perfect stay-at-home, bread-baking, cooking from scratch, regularly exercising, crafting, book-a-week reading, self-educating, board-game playing and whatever-else-I-thought-I-needed-to-be mom.  I manage to get some things right some of the time and in spite of this, my kids seem to be thriving and dh is happy.  The pressure comes from within. 

 

Like a previous poster said, Pinterest is a virtual file folder for me.  Way easier to use and to find things than the random files I had on my computer.

 

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I LOVE pinterest.  I find so much information and creative inspiration on it that I no longer find most magazines appealing.  I have boards for almost every area of life.

 

For example, I've found our food budget is WAY down if I have a set menu so I created a Recipe board for each day of the week:  IE:  on Friday we have pizzas, usually homemade.  So I have a board just of pizza recipes.  When it's time to plan the menu for the week I take a moment to browse the recipes and decide what to order.

 

I found our binder-based bill paying system on pinterest.  Not filing has made my life so much easier that I've transitioned to a binder-based system for homeschooling too.  I created a Staples Better Binder for each category of homeschooling we use - the sort of binder where the rings can be removed and filed.  So now the curriculum we're NOT using is filed away on the labeled binder rings, and the things we are currently using are in binders that we use every day.  When a child completes all the work in the binder I can take the next one out of the file cabinet, remove it from the binder rings, load the entire stack up onto the top of the printer/copier machine and it makes the copies for me in less than 20 minutes.  I remove the stack, put it back in the binder, hole punch the new assignments, and refill the child's binder with a year's worth of new work in less than an hour and with very little effort.

 

We moved in the last year and the bathtub in our new house was sort of nasty.  Nothing I found could clean it until I saw a Pin about how using Borax would get rid of nasty old tub stains.  I tried it and it did!   To maintain it I clean with that dawn dishsoap/vinegar trick that's gone around - It works great for maintenance (though it leaves a slippery film, so it's best used by me on the tub walls only, not by kiddos who spray the bottom of the tub too.

 

Sure, I have lots of pins I'll never do - I pinned the "proper" way to edge a garden bed, when the truth is I'll probably never become the sort of person who would care about that kind of thing - I hardly ever even get all the weeding done (maybe two or three times a summer - the rest of the time my garden is filled with weeds).  But Pinterest has a list of things that I could do to keep myself busy whenever I get bored, or worse, whenever kids complain of boredom and I can't think of a chore to give them.

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