Pinterest

I have a newfound love. Its name is Pinterest.

I can hear you now. Your mind is probably going crazy with one of two things. You're either thinking:

"Oh my gosh, I love Pinterest, too! Isn't it just the best ever?!" 

Or

"Great. Another one bites the dust. Pinterest is a huge time-waster." 

Photo by Natalie Lucida
Boldly cooking where no cook has cooked before...
or something...?

And I would have to agree with...both of you. All of you. Whichever it is you're thinking. (Okay, you get my meaning.)



I know that the way people (and when I say people, I pretty much mean women and girls--not to gender stereotype here, but let's not kid ourselves) use Pinterest is often really, well, stupid. I'm not trying to say that all my Pinterest-loving friends out there are stupid--not at all--but we all have time-wasters in our lives, and Pinterest generally functions as just another time-waster. You just keep finding more adorable DIY projects or delicious recipes or outfits you wish you had or hilarious memes or adorable pictures of squirrels. There are endless amounts of these to find. But are you ever actually going to make the DIY projects or the recipes? Are you going to actually buy those clothes? And as far as the memes and the squirrels, well, there isn't anything useful you could possibly do with those.

No, many rabid Pinterest fans will never put any of their amazing finds to good use. Because they are spending all their free time finding those things instead of actually using them.

For this reason, I hadn't really used Pinterest much, even though I joined a few months ago. I realized that as cool as it seemed to be, it would probably just suck the life out of me and turn me into a wannabe domestic.

But lately I've been getting back into cooking and I've been finding recipes I want to try. I kept forgetting where I found them, though, so I had to start putting them in an annoying little bookmark folder on my Internet browser. And I kept thinking how nice it would be to have a place where I could easily keep track of all the recipes I found online.

And then a couple days ago I realized, DUH. I have a Pinterest account! 

So I dashed over to Pinterest and restored the "Pin It" button to my browser. I immediately started rushing around to all my various food blogs and pinning like crazy. And now I have my handy-dandy little pinboard of recipes that I can look at any time I want, and my wonderful finds get conveniently shared with all my friends who are following my pinboards.

I've also done some browsing on Pinterest since then. But here's what I do (and if you're looking for words of wisdom and somehow believe that I'm some sort of expert on this, which I'm warning you I most thoroughly am not, here's what I recommend): I actually click on the picture and GO TO THE SOURCE. If a recipe looks amazing, I don't just pin it right away and figure I'll read the recipe later. That won't work. I'll just forget about it and I'll have a pinboard full of pretty food pictures to look at while I'm eating Top Ramen.

For other things, it depends--sometimes the picture is all you need. But I still make sure that I know exactly what I'm pinning, and that it's something I might actually USE, so my pinboards don't end up cluttered with visual representations of my wasted dreams. (And I stay away from memes and squirrels and other useless items.)

Pinterest isn't for everyone, but it certainly can be a great tool if you use it to your best advantage. Don't let Pinterest suck away your time--make it work for you!