Pin It Forward: Home, Sweet Home

Home for Jack and me is a constant work in progress, an ongoing lesson in curation. Home is where we entertain, work and (on occasion) relax. Our space serves several functions, and many of those overlap, so we’re constantly on the lookout for creative solutions to make the most of the space that we have. We scour places like Boomerangs for great pieces, make things that we can’t find and make it a point to purge often.

Boston has felt like home for both of us for quite some time now, but our current apartment is the first that has been home to just the two of us. Between us, we’ve lived in 14 different spaces in the city of Boston; every household purchase that we make now comes with the thought, “What if we have to move this?” The end result is that the home we’ve created for ourselves is fairly streamlined, and perpetually in flux.

Home for us is also a rental, which brings its own unique set of challenges. We can paint, sure, but we can’t change the placement of that annoying door that enters into the living room. We can move the fridge, but we can’t tear down the fiberboard cabinetry. And so, like many who rent, we make the changes that we can, and daydream about the rest – what would we do if the space was ours? If we could make it fit our ideal? We’ve got binders stuffed with clippings of ideas that struck our fancy, and of project inspirations just waiting to be tackled.

I’ve long been in search of a better system for organizing inspirational images that catch my eye around the web. I’ve tried printing them all, and storing them in three-ring binders alongside my magazine clippings (so difficult to index!); I’ve attempted to save them all to a USB drive and maintain a corresponding spreadsheet identifying the source of each (so much overhead!); ultimately, I’ve decided that a better solution must exist.

Enter Victoria of SFGirlByBay and Pinterest. For the past month, bloggers worldwide have come together to test out Pinterest, and to “pin-it-forward” in blogging on the common topic of home. Pinterest is part photo-sharing site, part inspiration board, part social media and completely fills the void I felt  in my struggle to organize my inspiration folders and the original sources of each piece.

Those binders I keep? They’re not the most usable things. So when the invitation to Pin It Forward came along and I signed in to my new Pinterest account, the first board I created was titled Home – General Inspiration. Themes quickly developed – neutral spaces with pops of color are apparently a favorite – and as I browsed my favorite blogs and Flickr sites day after day, I could easily add images to the board to return to later.

Pinterest saves source information with each pin that is added, so that if your image is re-pinned by another user who found your board inspiring, the image on their board retains the initial source credit. It’s easy to return to the original source, should you want to use the image in a blog post or just revisit the original context of any pin. On top of that, Pinterest makes it (dangerously) easy to follow other users’ boards – so there is no shortage of gorgeous content to explore.

Yesterday, Jamie Sinz blogged about the various homes she’s had throughout her life, and the people she has shared them with. Her blog fills me with wanderlust, and the images she shares from her travels are stunning. Thank you, Jamie, for the introduction!

Pretty and Yummy is slated for Monday – but she has started Pin It Forward early, sharing the first of her two-part study in home on her blog today. Her recipes and humour are both a delight; I hope you’ll stop by to take a look.

For a full list of Pin It Forward participants, click on the icon above – 300 bloggers worldwide are taking part, and there’s still a full week of posting in the works. Head over to Pinterest to take a look around, check out the rest of my pinboards here, and leave a comment below if you’re interested in an invitation to join – I have 10 up for grabs!

What does home mean to you? Is it a specific place, a specific person, a special box of books or piece of furniture that’s been with you through many, many moves?