Martha Stewart and Pinterest

My town library has a magazine recycling program where people bring their magazines when they are done reading them and other people can take them home to read themselves.  Last week they had a pile of new-ish Martha Stewart Living magazines and when I got home to read them, I realized that I had not opened one since I got married.  And I was a serious devotee.  My bridal registry and wedding were right out of Martha central casting.  I read it for years when I was single, planning the life that I would have, full of both soigne and simple "down east" dinner parties, second homes, and general gingham trimmed happenings everywhere you looked.  When I got engaged it was full Martha ahead, creamy blues and creamy browns with peonies and hydrangeas galore.

What took me most by surprise by the magazine was how I had completely forgotten how it sucks you in and makes you want to "settle down" and create a home and a family.  Martha failed me by not adding to her "make it beautiful" mantra the fact that without household help and boatloads of money you can't make it beautiful.  Believe me, I know how to do it, I could bust out the perfect home or wedding or event for someone willing to pay me, but Martha isn't real life.  Martha failed to prepare us all for the simple fact that there just isn't time when you work and have kids and have to run a home without help to make it beautiful.  You can keep your home and family clean and fed while your kids are small but that's it.

Martha should have taught us the art, that I have mastered, of three minutes to yourself.  Or how much you can get done with a little quiet time in your head during two or three hours to yourself.  When you have small kids you need to simplify and streamline everything.  Don't expect to have days on end to yourself to redo your house so it looks like Turkey Hill.  You can expect to carve out a small amount of time to go online or read a little or work on your mp3 player play lists.

My new mantra is:  I WILL NOT LET PINTEREST SUCK ME IN AND MAKE ME PLAN FOR HOMES AND TRAVEL AND DECORATING THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN.

I recently read a marketing report on who are the main users of Pinterest, the new social media internet sensation that is like living in an Etsy community but you don't really have to buy anything, just share and like beautiful things that you love or catch your eye.  http://pinterest.com/  The majority of users are female high school graduates aged 18-34 who are unemployed or work part time.  Basically, not the people who will actually use Pinterest or Martha to plan or decorate their second home, but the people who are dreaming of a better, more beautiful world they will someday inhabit.  Just like me and Martha before I got married and lived in the real world of babies and bills and cleaning and constant dish washing and family drama and living in a very isolating town where people don't come out of their houses, nevermind the 4th of July picnics I thought I would be throwing with red and white ric rac trimmed napkins from Brimfield.