A month ago, I signed a lease on a new apartment. I knew that I needed new furniture and was excited at the thought of shopping for all of it. But how could I stay organized while shopping? How could I remember what all I’d seen? Pinterest.
I made a board and appropriately called it Apartment.
I’m on Pinterest all day as part of my job so I know how to use it really well but you don’t need to be a professional Pinterester for it to help you.
The board started out being a place where I’d pin neat ideas that I hoped of someday accomplishing.
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| Will I actually use any of these? Probably not. |
Who knows, maybe someday I will be bored enough to buy plastic animals, cut them in half, paint them and glue them onto a piece of wood to make a necklace holder. Looks nice, but I probably won’t make it.
As I started to look for furniture and bedding, I needed a method to keep track of the products I liked. Luckily, almost every retail website now days has a PinIt! button so I would just pin the product I liked to my Apartment board. Then I could add my own notes in the pin description and the pin linked back to where I found it.
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| Pins of the bed sheets I liked. I ended up buying the one in the box. |
This transformed my Pinterest board from dream-apartment-ideas into actual-apartment-ideas.
Previously, when I’ve searched for items to buy (like a graduation dress) I made a Word document or Google Doc. But a Pinterest board is a much neater and cleaner way to keep track of potential items to buy.
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| Pinterest can be a clean and simple way to remember what you looked at when online shopping |
When I went to IKEA with my mom and my best friend, we ended up buying some furniture there. So, I searched on Pinterest and IKEA for images of what I bought and pinned those to my Apartment board. That way, I could remember what I had bought already. When I searched for the IKEA furniture on Pinterest, I could see creative new ways about how to use that piece. Bonus!
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| I pinned the IKEA furniture I bought to remember what I had |
I’m sure those who follow me on Pinterest may have been annoyed or confused as to why I was suddenly pinning all these shower curtains and sofas. If I was more concerned about not bombarding my followers or more shy about what I was pinning, I could have made it a secret board.
My parents and I looked at local furniture stores and when I saw a couch or dining room table I liked, I took a picture on my phone and made it into a pin for my Apartment board. This helped me put all my options in one place and remember what tables I’d already seen.
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| I took pictures of furniture I saw and pinned them on my board to remember. |
I hope this showed you how you too can use Pinterest.
My only complaint about Pinterest is that I wish there was a way you could move pins that you’ve already pinned around. I like that you can move your boards around but as of now, you can’t move your pins. Sad face.
Debbie Gillum Wakefield 