pinterest_pin-it_icon1For each article in this series, we focus on a technology that you’re likely already using, and how it can be re-purposed to help you manage your home-life. Last time, we covered how you can use Google to coordinate schedules and share information. Today, we’re focusing on Pinterest. Pinterest, one of the hottest social media platforms, is meant for helping people discover, collect, and share digital content in a completely visual fashion. Users can pin pictures of things that they like or are interested in from across the internet and browse their “boards” at their leisure. This is a great way to amass a digital library of everything you aspire to own, be, or see in your life. However, you can also use this visual smorgasbord to your advantage. Here’s how we do it in my house:

Recipes

While almost everybody has a Recipe Board, we’ve actually turned ours into a solid meal planning system. Every weekend, we take a look at our Recipe Board (called “Yum!”) and plan what we want to eat that week. After each meal, we decide whether we loved it or not. If we did, the meal gets promoted to another board that we call “Eat It Every Night.” If we didn’t love the meal, we delete the pin altogether. As we fall in love with more and more new dishes, we’re developing a collection of easy, healthy, and delicious go-to meals that we’d be happy eating all the time. Plus, whenever we’re ready to mix it up, we get to go back to our “Yum!” board and try something new.

Gifts

I always want to give a thoughtful gift that the recipient will love and enjoy. This usually means that I prepare for every gift-giving occasion with weeks of racking my brain trying to come up with the perfect gift. Eventually, I realize that time is running out and my choices are reduced to whatever Amazon can deliver within 24 hours as well as any stores that are located on the way to the gift-giving event. To help alleviate this pressure, each member of my family has created their own gifts board where they pin things that they’d love to get as a gift. While you might think that this takes the fun out of gift giving, we’ve decided this approach takes a lot of the pressure off. There’s no rule saying that the gift-giver can’t go “off-board” and at least then they’ll have an idea of what sorts of things the other person might like.

Projects & Crafts

If you’re looking for cool art projects for date night with your significant other or want to keep the kids entertained for the weekend – Pinterest has you covered. Spend a few minutes browsing arts & crafts projects, pick a few that appeal to you, and run down to your local craft store for supplies. Then have some fun with friends and family making something awesome and you’ll quickly become known as “The Cool One.”

Summary

Given Pinterest’s popularity, I’d be willing to bet that somebody in your family is using Pinterest on a daily basis, so why not take advantage of their likely addiction and turn it into a powerful tool for your family? We embraced this visual pin-board to catalog all of those visual pieces of data in our lives, and I can’t imagine ever going back.