Organizing My Decorating Ideas With #CanonPIXMA

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Canon PIXMA, but all opinions expressed are 100% my own.

I have a confession that you might find hard to believe, but here goes. I don’t find Pinterest to be helpful to me at all. I find myself going on pinning sprees, and then forgetting about it for a month or so, and then going on another pinning spree. But the problem is that I never, EVER refer back to the things that I’ve pinned. (Remember me mentioning that a while back?)

I do a little better with images and inspiration that I save directly to my computer. I actually refer back to those quite often, but the problem is that I can only scroll through the pictures one at a time. I can’t group them, look at several at a time, etc.

The fact is that I just do much better with an old-school bulletin board (just like I do much better with an actual paper and pen schedule, rather than a fancy online calendar).

So I decided to get organized, with a real, actual bulletin board, with real, tangible paper, where I can group ideas and see them all at a glance.

I’ve had two 24 x 36-inch chalkboards in storage ever since I moved my Kristi Linauer Interiors office several years ago. See them there on the right wall?

I removed the frame on one of them. The color was nice, and went great in my office back then, but it’s just not right for my house now.

So I gave it a coat of spray paint…

And then toned down the color with some Rust-Oleum wood stain in a new color called Weathered Gray.  (The paint color isn’t quite what I was hoping for.  I’ll probably repaint it as soon as I know how I want to decorate my office.)

Finally, I added a strip of ribbon down the middle (since I’ve decided to concentrate on two rooms in my home at a time), and I added some boxes at the bottom for items that can’t be tacked to the bulletin board, like small tile samples or countertop samples.

And then the fun began. First, I printed out labels for each side, and then I started going through all of my hundreds of inspiration pics, which was really fun. Collecting all of those pictures is quite a bit easier than actually sorting through them, finding ideas that I really want to use, and putting those pictures to use. It was also a prime opportunity to get organized and delete loads of pics that I no longer needed. Even with all of my narrowing down, editing, and careful selecting, I still had quite a stack of pics…

As I was cutting them out and making notes, I was able to narrow them down even further. Now I feel like I have a system that actually suits me, and since it’s right on my office wall where I’ll see it ever day, I’ll actually get use out of it.

I still need to sort through all of my inspiration pics for my bedroom, but the living room side is looking pretty darn inspiring (to me)!

Do you use an old school bulletin board for your inspiration ideas?  Perhaps you keep everything in a notebook?  Or are you one of those people who actually go back and use things you pin onto Pinterest? I’m just an old school bulletin board kind of person, because for me, if it’s out of sight, it’s out of mind.