Have you ever been to Pinterest? I love looking at all the cool pins. I see delicious looking recipes, great exercise ideas, beautiful decorating ideas, creative homeschooling ideas, simple craft ideas, and Cub Scout ideas. I can get lost in looking at all the things other people have done and then want to do them all. I try to be selective of the things I choose to pin to my wall. I really want to try them out. And sometimes I do. More often, I don't.
It is kind of like looking through magazines and earmarking all the pages that catch your eye. And then never opening the magazine again.
I just get too busy with day-today life that I can't even begin to do all the things I want to.
I guess I need to schedule my time better. I need to plan better. I need to be proactive. And then maybe I could be the next Martha Stewart.
The truth is my kids are not yet adventurous eaters, so the recipes around here are fairly routine. They are just as happy crafting with plain paper and paint, markers, or crayons as doing a planned project, and it is easier to get out and clean up. They are not necessarily more enriched from doing all the activities. They do it for a few minutes and move on. I am not currently in a place to put all the decorating ideas into place. Even if I were, I would have to get creative in order to afford some of the looks I have been drawn to. And most of the Cub Scout ideas don't work too well for a small den. When I try to exercise, I always get interrupted, so I end up having to incorporate it into activities with the kids. Now that I have begun unschooling, a lot of the homeschool ideas seem irrelevant at this point.
That is the downfall to a site like Pinterest. As great as it is at organizing wonderful ideas, you still have to make the time and put in the effort to make them happen. And it is easy to become envious because we see all these great ideas, and we are not doing them. Forget the fact there are a million people on the site and all the ideas were done by different people...not all the same person. And even if several ideas came from the same site, they were likely done over a long period of time. It is easy to allow ourselves to believe we are not doing enough and we should be doing more...just see what everyone else is doing!!! Just another form of keeping up with the Joneses. Another way of telling ourselves we are inadequate in the kitchen or as a parent or as a homemaker.
The truth is all we really need to do in our homes is provide the basics of nutritious food, clothes, shelter, love, and strong relationships. We are social beings, and relationships are what make or break people. If we are fostering those, all the rest is just fluff. Sometimes fluff is nice. Sometimes it just gets in the way. So are all the great ideas you have found out there complimenting your life or complicating your life? If they are causing stress or causing you to think you are failing at an imaginary standard, it may be time to cut them out of the picture and focusing on the little things that matter, like early morning snuggles and late-night movie night with the kids and spouse. Now those are things I can do!
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