How Decluttering My Pinterest Boards Led to a Fun Family Tradition

If you are a mom, you have been there. Exhausted, but can’t sleep. So much to do, yet wasting time on the internet. Promising yourself that you will go to bed early tonight, but find yourself staring at summer camps, swim lesson times, emails from the teacher, Facebook, and…Pinterest. 

I was one of those who would pin things for maybe, someday, and if we have time.  I have been an avid user of Pinterest recipes, but the rest of my boards went untouched for years.  So many ideas on how to garden {apparently I thought I would grow a green thumb eventually}, ways to organize our gift wrapping supplies, and the perfect American Girl crafts for my two young daughters. 

It was well past my bedtime when I started clicking on each board and deleting the things that I KNEW would never happen in my home.  The digital clutter was weighing me down and the edit and delete button was my cure. Goodbye wooden pallet backyard seating area idea {we are NOT a handy family, so why did I even pin this to begin with?}.  Goodbye 8 ways to teach your child their ABCs {my youngest was already a master at this, so again, digital clutter}.   

It was that night that I stumbled onto my board that I had created called “Fun Snacks.”  As I clicked through and was about to delete, I thought, this may be fun for summer…and that began a new family tradition. The first summer we made one fun snack a week.  One of my three children would pick something off of my Pinterest board, we would gather ingredients,  and spend a few minutes in the kitchen creating a lady bug out of a strawberry or a snowman out of a hard-boiled egg. 

How Decluttering My Pinterest Boards Led to a Fun Family Tradition | Houston Moms Blog

When spring time rolled around again, my children asked if we would be doing fun snacks again that summer. I assured them that we would. This time we were much more organized. We made three snacks a week {one for each of them}.  In late spring, we made a chart of the weeks of summer and each child wrote in their fun snack for the week after pouring over my Pinterest board.  This helped make sure I was organized and could add the ingredients to my shopping list each week.  That summer I posted some of our creations on Facebook.

By the time the next summer rolled around, I was getting emails from friends with cute snacks saying, “You should make this for your fun snacks this summer” or “I saw this cute banana penguin and thought of you!”  I LOVE those emails.  They make me smile every time. 

How Decluttering My Pinterest Boards Led to a Fun Family Tradition | Houston Moms Blog

Summer fun snacks help us build the bridge between my children’s ages and genders.  We have time together with no distractions.  My kids try new foods and gain kitchen skills. We work together, joke around, laugh at our awful cupcake decorating skills, and high five when something turns out just like the picture on Pinterest.  We have had many Pinterest successes, but we had our fair share of Pinterest fails, but we ALWAYS have fun. 

How Decluttering My Pinterest Boards Led to a Fun Family Tradition | Houston Moms Blog


 About Alison G.

Alison is a mom to three awesome kids:: Seth {13}, Anna {10}, and Sara {6} and one adorable labradoodle, Kelev. She just celebrated her 16th wedding anniversary with her wonderful husband, Andy. Alison was fortunate enough to be able to stay home with her children for 12 years, but recently went back to work part time doing contract speech therapy in local school districts. She loves to travel, scrapbook, and most importantly, spend time with family and friends.

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