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Sunday, September 8, 2013

A Kid's Gallery Wall

Some kids have room for all their toys in their bedrooms. Some kids have a separate play room. Some kids have a whole finished basement to keep all their crap. My kid lives in a tiny house. She has no toys in her bedroom. Instead she has a corner of the living room. She doesn't have her own bookshelf. Instead she has the two bottom shelves of our bookshelf. The basement is full of crap for sure, some of which is hers, but it's not a play space.

And we chose to live in this small space with a kid, so it's ok. I don't mind all the kid clutter most of the time. However, this kid is showing some early signs of hoarding, specifically when it comes to her drawings. She truly has a hard time letting them go. Little does she know, we are keeping some of the best ones for a memory book. But she has been taping other works of creativeness all over the place including on the teak television cabinet - eek!

It was time to give her a display space of her own.
I bought the RIKTIG hanging clips from IKEA. They are located in the window covering section, not the picture frame section in case you are looking for them. I didn't buy the wire from IKEA, because I planned to use up some of my yarn stash. I know this isn't a new idea, but our challenge was finding an appropriate wall to use. Again, we have a small house and there isn't space on the kid's bedroom walls that she can reach.
So we decided her art gallery should be on our...gallery wall! We put those frames up soon after moving in 8 years ago. Although everything there is still important to us, the content could use a refresh. But that's not the point. The point is, the kid now has a place to hang up whatever she wants on those wires.
These pictures show exactly how she hung things up. But here is a confession: I reorganized things and then took another round of pictures. Wrong. So wrong that I deleted every single one of those "staged" photos. I mean, the whole reason we placed the wires low to the ground was so that she'd have control over how things were placed. Bad mommy!



ps. This hallway doesn't photograph well, mostly because I don't know what I'm doing. But also because it is tiny and there is no natural light.

pps. Here are a couple of pinterest links to some much prettier projects with the same end goal as mine: framed wiresframed arthangersIKEA hack



6 comments:

  1. The fact that you are giving her control is great--it's good for her developmentally. (That's teacher talk for "you are being a good mom.")

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    1. Aww...that feels like a pat on the back. Thanks. Her first day of preschool was today and she LOVED it.

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  2. Perfect. My sister had a similar idea for the girls here. We have yet to get around to hanging it. I'm going to look for clips and get it started. Giving her control produced brilliant results if you as me.

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    1. Thanks :) She is so attached to that popped Hello Kitty balloon. She's also been hanging random toys up, which is kind of funny!

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  3. I love this idea - it looks great! And I know it makes her happy to see her artwork up there. I need to steal this idea for Charlotte. She brings home artwork almost every day now from preschool, and my fridge can only hold so much.

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    1. Our fridge is full, too. I'm trying to reserve the fridge for her calendar (which is just white paper that I've drawn on). You should post some of Charlotte's drawings :)

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