After reading this article announcing one of Pinterest’s latest features—”secret boards”—I had a flashback to a recent conversation with a friend. We’ll call her Molly. It went something like this:

Molly: “Are you on Pinterest?”

Megan: “Obviously.”

Molly: “Me too—I’m obsessed. My recipes board is better than Emeril’s. And I have a dogs board, a wedding board, a flower board—”

Megan: “You’re ENGAGED?”

Molly: “Er, no…why?”

Megan: “Oh, whoops, sorry…I just thought that because you have a wedding board on Pinterest, you’re, eh, planning a wedding…? I mean, does Tom (her boyfriend) know you have a wedding board?”

Molly: “Well, no…”

It was awkward. Was I too quick to judge Molly for making a wedding board when she didn’t have a wedding to plan (yet)? Maybe. But shouldn’t Molly have the freedom to pin anything she wants to? Yes. Which is why I forwarded the aforementioned article to her inbox pronto. With Pinterest’s latest rollout of secret boards, users can select to keep three of their boards private. Just turn the “private” option on when you create a new board. Unfortunately, you can’t make an existing public board private (sorry Molly). But you can made private boards public when you’re ready to share them with the world.

This got me thinking—what should be kept a secret on Pinterest?  And what kind of promiscuous pinning is going on here?  Aside from the obvious (weddings, surprise parties), what would make for a great secret board? I thought I’d share a few ideas here, and in keeping with our theme on the blog, they’re literary.

1. Character Crushes
Pins of Gale and Peeta are nice to look at, but an entire board of Gale and Peeta, frame-by-frame, from in every scene in The Hunger Games movie is a little excessive. And I’m sure you put a lot of thought into your Hunger Games shrine, but no one wants to see the inside of your closet.

2. Captain Underpants Collection
You should be proud of the fact that you’re a middle-aged male obsessed with Captain Underpants. But the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily need to see your plush action doll collection. Or that Halloween costume of you in your tighty whities and homemade cape.

3. Cat Board
There are a lot of cats in literature. And many of them are adorable (Garfield! The Cheshire Cat! Crookshanks!) But pin enough of them and people might start to talk. Don’t be the cat lady.

4. Guilty Pleasures
These are items you like to call “guilty pleasure” because it suggests you don’t think about them all the time, but you do. I’m on the fence about this one. If you want to share your decade’s worth of Babysitter’s Club paraphernalia, your Clifford socks, your Harry Potter bedside lamp (google it, they exist), your back issues of BOP Magazine, etc. etc. fine by me. But remember, some things are best kept to yourself.

5. Holiday Wish-List
As we enter the holiday season, you might start a board about all the presents you want this year. You might pin tons of books and toys and games and collectable items until you’re brimming with holiday cheer. But that kind of behavior might put you on the naughty list. No one likes a greedy elf. Keep it to yourself!

Thank you, Pinterest, for letting us keep our questionable pins on the DL until we’re ready to let our freak flags fly.