Hey Overwhelmed Mom, Your Life Doesn’t Have to be Pinterest Perfect

I love Pinterest.

Pinterest is a magical place where DIY projects, recipes, advice, and life hacks are just a click away.So many unique and helpful ideas come from Pinterest for every type of person.

There are countless amazing things about Pinterest—but I’ve found one negative: if you aren’t careful, Pinterest can make you really discontent with your life. You can easily start comparing everything about your life to the many pins you’ve saved.

Suddenly, you’re a bad mom because you don’t have craft day every week with paper plates, colored rice, or paint. You feel like other moms are judging you because your kids go to school without animal-shaped sandwiches and smiley face fruit in a Bento Box. If your kiddos are at home, you feel like they are so behind because you don’t have a week dedicated to the letter “B” and you don’t have a color coded enrichment schedule for them. 

Then you can start to see your house as bland and plain without farmhouse decor or neat DIY space-saving storage. You quickly become so disenchanted with your home because you don’t have the perfect outdoor entertaining space or your bedroom doesn’t have a homemade tufted pallet headboard. Nothing looks right, everything looks dingy because it doesn’t look like your “Dream Home” board.

Next your marriage takes a hit. You are suddenly a failure as a wife because you don’t have a weekly cleaning schedule, homemade cleaning products, or an iron-clad evening routine. And cooking? Forget about feeling like a good cook if you don’t have a chalkboard meal plan full of homemade, organic ingredients that your children eat with no complaints. You’re obviously a terrible wife if essential oils and hand-lettered signs aren’t in every single room of your home.

Even your wedding now seems less than; your centerpieces were definitely not vintage enough and there were absolutely not enough mason jars. Why were there no mason jars?!

Also, as a friend, you definitely feel like you’re terrible. I mean when was the last time you threw a fully themed dinner party for your friends or made them a super cute care package just because? They probably secretly hate you because you don’t do any of the things they have on THEIR Pinterest boards.

Don’t forget Jesus. Oh man, Jesus is also definitely disappointed that your quiet time is not Pinterest perfect every single day. You are supposed to sit on a padded window seat in the sun with hot coffee and the dog curled up at your feet. Then you should proceed to pray for 15 minutes, do a Bible Study or devotional for 30 minutes, write from you monthly Scripture plan, and finally, pray again. If your quiet time doesn’t look like this, you feel like you shouldn’t even bother. (By the way, I feel like I should interject here that this is SO NOT TRUE.)

Do you see what I’m getting at?

Pinterest is a great thing, really, so many useful ideas and things you just don’t have time to create yourself ready right there to click on. I am not saying we should all swear off Pinterest; we just need to be careful about how much time we spend comparing our lives to the picture perfect pins we scroll through. Can you get some inspiration, or “Pinspiration” from the many, many, boards? Absolutely! Just don’t let yourself ever feel less than because your life doesn’t look like what others choose to post on a website.