Your Pinterest space.

Don’t you love all those pictures of perfect rooms on Pinterest… Just perfect. Everything in its place. Neat and tidy. Colour coded. That would be my perfect world. I describe such places as PINTERESTY. I find myself wondering how these superhuman people do it. They have the most amazing storage ideas and everything is labelled and in its place. By contrast, my house is a roller coaster of various degrees of untidiness and clutter. In the morning I whizz around neatening up as much as I can while the kids are at school, and before I get on with all my other chores. Then, when the kids get home it slowly but surely becomes yet again less and less PINTERESTY. I find that I spend so much time striving too hard for perfection and that ultimately my ideal version of what should be PINTERESTY becomes PINTERES-TRY: good attempts but ultimately disappointing.

I have yet to meet someone who actually has a Pinterest worthy house. Social media often creates a pseudo reality which actually could be detrimental for one’s mental health. The truth is that there is NO such thing as Pinterest perfect house. At least not in a home where there are adults and children and very often pets. People walk, live, read, cook, eat, drink, play, climb, dress, fix, sleep, bath… you get the picture. For my house to be perfect I would literally have to run after every single member of the family, all the time, day in and day out. And let’s be honest, life is more than that, right? In fact, there is no Pinterest perfect anything – it’s all an illusion.

Thus I have decided to compromise, and I have now allocated a single place in my home where I can have my Pinterest showroom… that single part of the house which I can look at, at any given time of the day and I can say to myself, “Now that’s Pinterest worthy, that is PINTERESTY.” It makes me happy. A few years ago it was my PINTERESTY coffee station, and now it’s my Ginger jar display in our family reading room.

Try make a list of every room you would like to improve and then choose the one that will make YOU happy and start with that. Maybe you would really want start with the kitchen because it’s often a mess, and being the place where the family’s nourishment comes from it affects everyone. But maybe you have always wanted a nice space in your house where you could just relax with a cup of coffee, or glass of wine and read a book while you unwind. If that makes you happy then start with that. Make it your PINTERESTY room.

The level of organisation and tidiness is personal and no one can tell you to what extent exactly things have to be neat and organised. What’s fairly cluttered for me might be cozy for someone else, and what’s sufficiently organised and neat for some might be too minimalistic and clinical for me. We are all individually unique and should create unique environments for ourselves and our family as a whole, which suits and works well for everyone.

You are in control of what you want to change, and how much of it. If you strive to reach someone else’s apparent perfection you are setting yourself up for disappointment. So pick a room, visualise your ideal, comfortable, revitalising space and go for it.

Use blogs and social media as inspiration and remember what the goal is: a space to make you and your family feel at HOME.