Ah Pinterest! My favorite social hangout spot. I started using it several years ago and I am still hooked. No surprise really, because this place is full of eye candy. And it is also very informational for a wannabe creative like me.
But over last few weeks, I felt like my boards had gone all over the place. I wanted my Pins organized so I could find them exactly when I needed them. I also wanted anyone looking at my profile / boards should be able to know what’s going on. Without good organization, my Pinterest was looking like a messy craft room. I could still get a lot done in it, but I was wasting way too much time looking for things I needed.
So I went on a spring summer-cleaning spree for my Pinterest. Here’s how I did it.
I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish for my Pinterest boards
I wanted board names to be categorized.
I wanted to move pins to their appropriate boards. Of course there will be a few which are too-hard-to-put-in-one-category. For these, I allowed myself to take a best guess. But for 90% of my pins, I wanted them to stick to one clearly understandable category and hence fall in a certain board.
I wanted my board categories to be alphabetically ordered. I did make just a couple exception to this one too, but for most categories, they are all alphabetically sorted.
I used Evernote to create a list of boards I wanted to have. This wasn’t exactly followed but it served as a guide while I did all the arranging. Here’s my list. Feel free to use it if you like :-)
Kanha
Blogging
Create with VS
Cook with VS
Diy // home decor
Diy // food & drinks
Diy // greeting cards – should be birthday, mothers day, fathers day, note cards
Diy // paper crafts – gift boxes, post it holders etc
DIY // Seasons greetings and gifts
DIY // Holidays // Valentine’s day
DIY // Holidays // Christmas & New Year
Digital // fonts & templates
Digital // printables
Diy // Sketch, draw, paint
Fashion // Women / Western
Fashion // Women / Indian
Health // Workout
Fashion // Men
Fashion // Men / Indian
Fashion // Kids – girls
Home // General and color schemes
Home // house plans
Home // garden
Home // living room
Home // kids room
Home // bedroom
Home // bathroom
Moving
Photography
Places to visit
Planning & budgeting
Things to do in
Thoughts
Then I got to working in Pinterest itself. First I rearranged all the boards. I also temporarily renamed ones I wanted to merge into another board. Earlier moving your boards wasn’t possible. But now, Pinterest has added drag and drop feature on your profile on web and iPad (not sure about iPhone). I didn’t find this feature in Android phone / tablet. To rearrange my boards on web, I followed the steps below.
Login to Pinterest on a computer (web page).
Look in the top right corner and found my name. Clicked on it to open list of my boards.
For each board I wanted to move, I clicked on its name, dragged and dropped it to its new location. Easy peasy :-)
I then went to each board and moved the pins to the board where I wanted it to be. I think I covered almost all boards, but will double check (someday!). Again you can easily do this in the web page. I did not find a way to bulk-move pins on iPad / Android tab / Android phone.
I logged in using Chrome on my laptop (web page) and went the board from where I wanted to move pins out (old location of the pins).
On right hand side, there’s a button called “Move Pins”. Clicked it.
Each of the pins below got a little check box in top right corner. Used these check boxes to select all pins I wanted to move.
At this point, I had four new buttons on the page – Move, Copy, Delete and Cancel.
Selected the pins, clicked on Move. When asked to select a different board, chose the new location where I wanted pins to show up and clicked Move.
I also used same technique to delete unwanted / duplicate pins.
Here’s how everything looks on my Pinterest now. I love these freshly organized boards and can’t stop pinning to them. :-)
There you have it. Some tips to organize your Pinterest space. I am also planning to go back in and edit descriptions of my boards + fix the main image for some of these boards, so users can easily find them in their searches.
So what are your thoughts on Pinterest and in general the whole “organizing” thing? Love it? Hate it? Do chime in. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
xoxo, ~Varada
