DIY Detox

Do it all, have it all! Every day we are bombarded with messages convincing us that, with a little help from technology, we can take on the world all by our lonesome. The cold, hard truth: It’s not the healthiest way to live. In the name of wellness (and your sanity), it’s time to switch o YouTube, shut down Pinterest and delete your self-improvement apps. We can help you with that, IRL.

- Sydney Loney

A FEW WEEKS AGO, THE LITTLE glass spin plate in our microwave oven suddenly stopped spinning. I headed straight to Google, watched a four-minute YouTube video and – voila! – after a quick trip to Home Depot, it was going in circles again. Not long after, I was having some friends over for dinner and downloaded The New York Times cooking app just so that I could wow my guests with the silkiest, most Instagram-worthy cherry cheesecake ever to grace a dinner-party dessert plate.

Speaking of going in circles, these days, it’s not enough to pack a nutritious, colour-coordinated kid’s lunch featuring all four food groups or to perfect the most awkward inverted yoga pose ever; you then need to post the triumphant results on Facebook to prove to the world that, yes indeed, mission accomplished.

“Our generation has gotten stuck in a backlash to our mothers’ rejection of the idea of the domestic goddess,” says Katrina Onstad, author of The Weekend Effect: The Life-Changing Benefits of Taking Time Off and Challenging the Cult of Overwork. (She seems to recall that her mother owned an apron with “Screw Housework” scrawled on the front.) Onstad says that the pressure to be amazing at everything – from navigating careers to raising kids to making flawless floral arrangements – really took hold with Martha Stewart and the cult of aspirational domesticity that she inspired. And thanks to social media and the power of Google, it’s showing no signs of abating. “The Internet has amplified the message that you can’t just have it all; you can do it all,” says Onstad.