We’re currently in the process of renovating the kitchen of my childhood home back in Sydney. The process has been nothing short of educational but I’m pleased to note that nothing has gone wrong to date.
The planning process has also given me the opportunity to really figure out what I love when it comes to interior design. I’m a pretty old-fashioned kinda gal, and I’ll take an old-fashioned, country-style interior over a sleek, modern, lifeless form any day of the week.
I’ve had a lot of fun scouring the web looking for images to inspire our new kitchen. Google Images certainly makes the arduous task of finding relevant images much, much easier. But I’ve also found that Pinterest has become my second port-of-call for finding inspiration.
I boarded the hype-train and created an account a few months ago but I never really ‘got’ the whole Pinterest thing until recently and I don’t know why. I’ve kept physical scrapbooks filled with magazine cutouts and built up my own real-world pinboards in the past, so it was a pretty logical step to move into to the digital landscape, its vast wealth of images literally at my fingertips. I love that I can now be a digital curator of images without even having to try too hard.
I also love that there is this huge community that has built up around Pinterest. Strangers sharing images, liking and re-pinning to their heart’s content. Our pinboards growing and developing into a virtual representation of ourselves.[1] I wonder what Sherry Turkle has to say about it?[2]
My Pinterest account is still a little bare, but I don’t want to just pin ‘anything’. It’s not my style. I will generally pin something when the image really resonates with me. As my focus is on the renovation at the moment, my pins will be too but I’m excited to see where my newfound interest in Pinterest will end up.
You can follow me on Pinterest here.
[1] I read an annoying article arguing that Pinterest is “killing” Feminism because women were pinning images related to health and fitness and pretty things, and that this was somehow perpetuating the bad, bad, BAD social conditioning we’ve been exposed to for decades from the evil print and broadcast media sectors (srsly?) I was pleased to see the overwhelming backlash that the author received in the comments section. Yay for common sense and freedom of the individual to pin as they please!
[2] Sherry Turkle is one of my absolute favourite academic writers and has been researching and writing about online identities for over 20 years. I’ve just received her latest book ‘Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other‘ from Amazon and I’m just itching to start reading it!