What's Up on the Walls: Yours and Kid's

What do you have on your walls? Right now, I have nothing, but it wasn't always so.

My first house was full of prints and photo prints - too full, in fact. When we put it up for sale, the realtor warned us that if people come into a home and see the owner's art, they won't be able to imagine their own. So we took everything down and lived that way for more than a year while we got the house in shape to sell.

I thought it would bother me, but somehow or other I liked the quiet walls. That may be due to the stress of selling a home, and not wanting more stimulation? I really don't know.

I can tell you that when we moved to our new home, I was looking forward to putting up prints again--but haven't. As Thanksgiving approaches, I am starting to look at the pictures I want and the pictures I don't want. I'm happy to say my husband doesn't want to throw a bunch of art up, either--perhaps because we've been living without any for so long.

In any case, I've decided less is more. If you're living with children, you of course want to display their art--and that's what refrigerators and bulletin boards are for.

I do think kids should be allowed to vote on the art you want to put up in their rooms - whether they're five or fifteen. You don't have to say yes to everything, but I think a big benefit of having your child choose his or her own pictures is that they can learn a lot about their own preferences--and of course, themselves.

At our house, there are a lot of paneled walls (built in 1957) so I don't really know what I'm going to do there. We do have some favorite prints and even an oil painting or two that can go up elsewhere, but for some reason lately, I've been stuck on Charles Addams cartoons, and whatever else we do or don't do, I really want one of those.

And no, I don't want the movie photos - (yuck!) I'm talking about the original cartoons.

I guess my preference for Addams tells you a lot about my Beat - Punk - Goth sensibilities (and why writing about a Beat girl in the Beat Street Series so appeals to me). As it turns out, we have a hideous wallpaper mural downstairs that I would love to cover with an Addams print, but the mural is way too big and wide and we're probably going to have to settle on something more like a nature panorama -- though to be honest, I'm not terribly crazy about those.

If I could, right now, I'd put up nothing but Addams cartoons. If my son was younger and still living here, I'd have a great excuse, as he loves them too. He had an Addams Family Values poster (along with a Jim Carey poster and one of King Kong.) I drew the line when my son asked if he could have a live bat in his room (we had an infestation and he wanted to keep one as a pet.) Otherwise, though he was pretty much his own decorator. And I pretty much liked what he did.

For now, I think, I may have to settle on just one Addams cartoon print. But the idea of too much color in all the other the prints we have around here just isn't appealing to me.

Maybe I should leave the walls blank for a few more weeks?

*Sigh*

But if you want an original Charles Addams print, you can find one here.

For more information about how to involve YOUR children in choosing art for their rooms, I'd take a look at these articles:

Should Parents Let Kids Design Their Own Bedrooms? (I say yes, but not entirely)

Letting the Kids Decorate Their Own Room

Let Children Do What They Want With Their Own Bedrooms  (can you tell my bias here?)


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