When I get on Instagram and I scroll through my feed I see so much perfection. Perfect food, perfect homes, perfect people. Clutter free, clean homes. Beautiful food that takes only a second to process. Amazing, genius ideas. I see accounts and people with hundreds, thousands and millions of followers. It only takes a few seconds to take in a huge load of perfection. And I just can’t help but compare.

When I look up from my phone, I see a messy home, stuff everywhere that I should pick up, kids crying or making messes. I see the opposite of perfection. It is a mess! I look at my Instagram and I compare my number of followers to other people (there’s always someone with more followers!). I see my blurry photos and millions of outtakes.

It can’t help but be depressing when you compare Instagram with real life! I find the more time I spend looking at images on Instagram or in magazines and online, the less satisfied I am with my own life.

Now the debate I have with myself is this. I think Instagram would be a lot better if people posted more realistic images instead of constantly perfect, edited and staged images. But at the same time I have this desire inside of me to create and seek perfection and beauty, and to create art through my photos.

Using all the knowledge I gained over the last year I’m in a place where I can stage and take pictures that turn out beautiful, well lit and in focus. I love the artistry of picking out the backdrop to highlight the color of the food, and it is highly gratifying to take an idea in my head and bring it to life in real life, and then capture it in a picture.

BUT when I look at these photos of the kids cooking, it doesn’t capture the reality of cooking with toddlers! It looks peaceful! It looks easy! It looks beautiful! And cooking with toddlers is anything BUT that. You don’t see the yelling, the pile of dishes, the hour spent washing dishes after bedtime OR the baby whining in the background. You don’t see the stress! You don’t see the mess! You don’t see how it feels to scrub pancake batter out of the carpet. (And it doesn’t feel good!)

When I started stepping back about 10 feet and taking a shot of the whole area – the clutter and everything – and putting that at the end of my posts, I felt so much better about what I was putting out there. The last thing I would want is for anyone to look at my work and put themselves down because their own life doesn’t look that beautiful. Or because they choose not to cook with their kids. My hope is that other moms would look at my work and say, see, she’s just like me, she’s struggling through this and trying to figure this out too.

We’re all in this together. The more I strive to limit my time on social media, and increase my time with real people, look at other faces without makeup on (and see their pores!), hear other moms with kids talk about their day to day life, I feel good. I feel content. I feel supported. And the less time I spend looking at perfect, air brushed faces, homes and children, the less discontented I feel.

Anyone out there get me on this?