Okay, I know, I know!  You’re looking for more reasons to step away from Instagram – not towards it.  But hear me out.  If you’re like me (i.e. OBSESSED) then it’s probably one of the first apps you open up and choose to have a quick scroll through first thing in the morning – y’know, during those ten or so minutes in bed after the alarm has gone off but before you’ve resigned yourself to crawling out and facing the day.  Whereas Twitter is the go-to for up-to-the-minute news and the latest talking points (kind of like ye olde newspapers – remember them?), Instagram – on the other hand – is the glossy magazine alternative; the place to go for (mostly) real lives, viewpoints and stories, holiday spots, styling tips and food.

As a teenager, I loved cutting up magazines.  Once I was finished reading the latest issue of Marie Claire, Glamour, Seventeen or Mizz (yikes, remember Mizz?!) I’d get snippy with the scissors – flicking through and cutting out my favourite pictures, from clothes to quotes, to photographs of food I wanted to make and faraway places I wanted to visit.  I’d blue-tack them all to the walls of my bedroom (permanently pock-marking the paintwork and forever putting me in my Mum’s bad books…) – and it was a kind of my own mood board, and a scrap book of ideas; Instagram and Pinterest before they even existed.

Nowadays, I can just use Pinterest and Instagram – and I do!  And while Pinterest is great when I’m on my computer or tablet, I wouldn’t dare put it on my phone (buh-bye monthly data allowance!).  Instagram on the other hand is far more portable.  It’s not just a social media app or a tool I use to promote my recipes and my blog, but now that you can create collections of saved photos it’s also become a handy tool to organise my ideas, interests and inspirations.  Much like Pinterest, I use it to collect recipes that I fancy trying out, outfits I want to recreate, places I want to visit, as well as photos that I love – all to create my own little mood board to inspire my own photography.  If you’re on the app all the time then you might as well use the features to help make life easier, right?

If you’ve never heard of the save function on Instagram or have never used it, then hold tight; I’m going to show you how to use it, and how I use it to organise my life!

How to Save/Bookmark Photographs on Instagram

Scrolling through Instagram, if there’s a photo that you really like the look of – whether it’s an interesting outfit (ooh, I fancy getting a coat like that), or a recipe you really fancy – you can save it to your own private collection.  All you have to do is click the little bookmark symbol in the bottom right hand corner.  No one will know that you’ve saved it, so don’t worry about feeling like a creep!  Just clicking it once will save it, but if you hold down, then a little menu will pop up at the bottom of the screen, giving you the option to organise that photo into a specific folder that you can label yourself.

To see your collection of saved photos, head to your profile page and click the little symbol made up of three horizontal lines in the top right hand corner.  A menu will slide out and from there you’ll be able to access your saved photos by clicking “saved”.

This is where you can get as creative and as organised as you like!  What you save and how you save it and organise it is entirely up to you – but here are a few collections I like to keep.

Midweek Meal Ideas

I’ve got quite a few collections of recipes that I’ve stumbled across on Instagram (I’m a food blogger, after all!).  I’ve got a collection full of recipe ideas for Christmas, and one full of desserts, but the one I keep on adding to and tend to dip into the most is the one I’ve labelled “Midweek Meals”.  I love cooking, but sometimes coming up with something to cook in the middle of the week when I’m knackered and tempted to call in a takeaway is TOUGH.  So what I like to do is save some ideas from the food accounts that I follow on Instagram – that way, I’ve always got something up my sleeve when I come to plan my meals for the week and can’t think of anything to cook. 

Holiday Rec List

Before I go away somewhere – whether that’s a city break or a beach holiday – I like to create a new collection on Instagram full of ideas on places to visit and to eat!  Before Sunny and I flew out to Vancouver last year for our Canadian Roadtrip, we knew we were only going to have a day at most to explore the city and so we used Instagram to decide what we wanted to see and where we wanted to eat.  By doing that, we found this tiny, tiny Taco Bar for dinner that we never would have known about had it not been for photos of their crazy cocktails and tacos on Instagram.  It’s such a great way to plan a trip – or even collect places you’d like to go in your own Home Town!  Plus, you’ll always – hopefully – have your phone on you – and with the added locations and maps feature, it’ll be like having a curated and personalised guidebook in your pocket! 🙂

DIY and Interiors Projects

I’ve been thinking about giving my office a little bit of an overhaul recently and so I’ve created a collection full of ideas on how I’d like to decorate it.  Instagram is full of interiors and DIY accounts as well as brand accounts selling home furnishings.  So as you can see, I’ve saved lots of photographs of home offices, storage ideas, lamps (gotta find that perfect desk light!) and even colours for the wall via the Pantone and Farrow and Ball accounts!

Seasonal Outfits

I follow a lot (A LOOOOT) of fashion accounts because I’m pretty hopeless when it comes to creating outfits for myself.  I organise any fashion posts that I save into Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter collections – so everything’s easy to find.  Not only are these collections great for creating outfit mood boards and collecting ideas for outfits, but I use it to inspire my future wardrobe.  If I can see that I’ve pinned a lot of white blazers in my summer collection, then I know that that’s perhaps something I’d like to add to my wardrobe next season.  By scrolling through what I’ve saved, I can get real idea of which styles I tend to like and might like to buy into, and also how to wear them!

That’s it! Have you ever used the save function on Instagram?  Have a great weekend everyone! 🙂