Nina Williams frequently changes her decor to
satisfy her followers
(ninawilliamsblog/Instagram)To operate a successful account can be a full-time job of creating content, responding to comments and
coordinating with brands. Saeta, 60, dedicates 60 hours a week to tending her account and blog, which she
describes as a “small media company”. Williams, a stay-at-home mother with four children, spends two to
three hours a day on her account and blog, earning about half as much as she estimates she might if she
worked on it fulltime.
There is “labour that goes into keeping a family home in show-home condition”, says Kim Barbour, a
lecturer in media at the University of Adelaide in Australia, who has studied the influence of Instagram on
home life. “I imagine there would be times when the pressure to maintain the glossy-magazine styling
becomes a real burden.”
It might be summer vacation for Erin Rollins’ three children, but the 208,000 followers of
@erin_sunnysideup, the account she runs along with a blog, expect to see regular posts about the five-
bedroom house that she and her husband, Ken Rollins, 43, a corporate lawyer, built in San Diego.
All summer, the children have been hanging out in the room above the garage that Rollins, 42, spent the
last year transforming into a family theatre. In mid-July, with her design work finally complete, she
temporarily evicted them from their lounge space so she could stage and photograph it for the big reveal
that she plans to share online in the next few weeks. The children protested, but complied. “I’ve been
blogging and taking pictures of us living in our home for over 10 years, so my kids aren’t fazed,” she says.
Generally, Rollins stages and photographs the spaces when the children are out of the house, which is easier
now that all three are school age. “When they get home, the house is messy,” she says.
Erin Rollins runs a blog alongside her Instagram
posts (erin_sunnysideup/Instagram)The interiors of other people’s homes have long captured the public imagination. In the 1980s, viewers
followed Robin Leach around on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous for a glimpse inside the opulent homes of
wealthy people who were often not that famous. In the 2000s, a generation of celebrities (and eventual