bookmarks | 4 Mothers

My name is Marcelle, and I’m a Pinterest junkie.

It wasn’t always this way. As an inveterate web surfer, I’ve collected a prodigious number of internet bookmarks on three different computers. I bookmark everything, from recipes to Christmas crafts* to websites featuring the most perfect apartments ever. I have 25 pages of favourite shops on Etsy. I can spend hours “decorating” my next house. But because my bookmarks are spread over three computers and seven years, when I want to find something — that perfect recipe for meatloaf, for example — I have to search around, inevitably forgetting what I was looking for in the process.

Enter Pinterest. Pinterest is described as a online pinboard — a place to keep track of all those cool things you find while surfing the net, and to see what others people like as well. Other people can repin your favourites on their own boards and comment on items you’ve pinned. Part planning tool, part social media site, Pinterest lets me indulge in my compulsive need to categorize, file and save, and it’s fun, too. Time Magazine named it one of the best websites of 2011. I’ve seen people use these virtual pin boards to keep track of favourite books and music, coordinate book clubs and plan special events such as weddings.

The best part of Pinterest is looking around at other people’s “pins” — things other people find interesting. But that’s because I’m nosy, um, I mean, curious.

And without Pinterest, I’d never know about this, which a friend of mine pinned: