Do you let your kids stick/tack stuff to their walls?
My mom used to get so mad at my brother for using tacks on his walls to stick up posters of girls and rock bands. I don’t think she cared so much about the content. She just didn’t want things stuck to her walls. Oh how she worried about her walls.
His favorite was of course the Farrah Fawcett poster in her red bathing suit. It was posted right over his desk. (He gave her a black eye with a pen one time when he was mad.)
My mom gave him so much heck about posting things on his wall that I don’t remember ever putting anything up. It wasn’t worth being yelled at.
I wondered with the advent of the stretchy-tacky putty (kind of of like gum that can be pulled off easily) if parents even care anymore about posters and stuff being stuck to walls?
I love it when my kids decorate their rooms. I love to see what they feel expresses their personalities. My 10-year-old is all about Taylor Swift and the 8-year-old loves Angry Birds and Skylanders. The 4-year-old wants a calendar to post and a poster. She’s mad she doesn’t have posters like her brother and sister.
Maybe I will mind when the boy tries to stick up hot girls. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Do you mind when your kids/teens decorate their walls? Do you have to sign off on the content or you don’t mind? Do you care about tack holes? Do you favor the new sticky putty?
What do you remember having up in your room?
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56 comments Add your comment
mom2alex&max
February 2nd, 2012
12:50 pm
Never thought about it and I don’t care. A house is a home when you live in it, not when it looks like a showroom floor.
JOD
February 2nd, 2012
12:55 pm
Never thought about it, either, but when she is older I don’t think I’ll care. There are lots of ways to avoid holes in the wall, but even thumbtack holes only take a second to fill in later. I will keep half an eye on content, but don’t anticipate any problems.
Wayne
February 2nd, 2012
12:59 pm
Ahh.. Farrah Fawcett and the other Charlie’s Angels ladies. Yup, had those posters when I was a kid.
I prefer if the kids use the gummy stuff because 1) I have plaster walls and as soon as you stick something in the, you can hear half the wall fall apart behind it, and 2) we don’t seem to have any magnetized appliances because of that stainless steel thing… We keep thinking we’ll paint a spot or two with that magnetized paint but haven’t got roundtuit.
TXMom
February 2nd, 2012
1:03 pm
My parents were the same way (and still are). I was never allowed to hang anything on my walls (except for professionally-framed stuff). As a result, my walls were pretty bare growing up. My parents’ walls still are (except for a few things).
Me? I don’t care. My girls have calendars and other things hung in their room. I’m not worried about the holes. That’s what spackle is for, after all.
motherjanegoose
February 2nd, 2012
1:13 pm
No, I was not allowed to put stuff up in my room. My kids did put some things up. Posters of sports are still in our son’s room, which was decorated with a Braves motif years ago.
So that some of you will be pleased with my real life not so perfect world, I will share this story:
When I was a girl, we bought a house that previously had a beauty parlor in the basement. ( early 1970’s). That room was remodeled for my room and a nice vanity was purchased, in addition to matching decor with wallpaper. I was 13. My Mom was a NIT PICK about everything being showroom clean. NOTHING could be awry. Being a teenager, I sometimes left things out and did not make military corners on my bed.
SO…as a punishment, I was moved into the furnace room and slept on a cot right next to the furnace for an entire month. It was noisy, dark and cob webby. Additionally, the floor was cement. I was not allowed in my room at all….locked out. Just a chapter in my not so perfect life!
I was not a pickety pants about my kids rooms at all. As long as it they get straightened once in a while… fine. I went in my daughter’s bathroom this week ( no one uses it now as both kids are gone) I saw a ring in the toilet as it has not been flushed in several weeks. Oh well, I cleaned the bathroom and moved on. My own Mother would probably flip if she came to my house ( we sometimes have dog art on the windows, cob webs, dishes in the kitchen sink, dust on the baseboard and shoes in front of the couch) but it is MY house and she is no longer able to come, so no worries. When I am out of town for a week, there is not much I can do and when I get home I do not rush in with a mop and broom. That is just me.
motherjanegoose
February 2nd, 2012
1:15 pm
ooops…that is dog nose art…which we also have on our car windows once in a while.
Soccer MILF
February 2nd, 2012
1:21 pm
Whats wrong with hot girl posters? Better then if they had pics of hot guys. My kids have an Obama dart board and pics of some of their favorite “actresses”.
jmb
February 2nd, 2012
1:27 pm
Our house is a log house so tacks won’t begin to go in them ; ) My daughter had pics of mostly family and friends taped over an entire wall but had it been of some cute guy in his underwear, I wouldn’t have cared. It’s part of being a teenager and it brings our their personality. MJG – sorry for what you went through with your mother. She sounds like she was a very selfish woman. I too have a lot of sad stories as we were very poor growing up but I always knew my mother loved me and pray every day she was still here to tell her.
Moochelle Obama
February 2nd, 2012
1:44 pm
My daughters have pictures of there favorite healthy snacks….and Karl Marx.
Razz
February 2nd, 2012
1:53 pm
My walls were covered with posters and pictures growing up. I was in LOVE with Bon Jovi at the time and had a whole wall that was covered with magazine pictures of him from top to bottom/end to end, hundreds of holes in the wall. :)
motherjanegoose
February 2nd, 2012
2:05 pm
@jmb…thanks…I am not sure I remember my Mom telling me that she loved me much but I tell my kids every time I talk to them, so they will not forget.
So I'm not the only one
February 2nd, 2012
2:05 pm
Just some food is all.
MomsRule
February 2nd, 2012
2:14 pm
NO issues here with hanging things on the walls in their bedrooms. The walls are so easy to fix and it is their space so I encourage them to make them their own.
We paint their rooms every few years and they get to choose the color(s) as well. My oldest currently has lime green and bright yellow. The youngest has lime green and orange. The youngest is also huge into airsoft so we took a huge piece of fencing and spray painted it camo. We hung it on one wall and that is where he hangs (when they aren’t on the floor!) his supplies and guns. Its actually pretty cool looking.
The only thing I won’t allow are the walls to be painted black.
MJG – I’m so saddened to hear your Mom stories.
I love the MJG mom stories
February 2nd, 2012
2:19 pm
They are epic! Keep them coming…..In 25 word or less please.
Techmom
February 2nd, 2012
2:20 pm
The only thing I’ve gotten upset about is stickers. I swear my son has had an obsession with stickers. I finally allowed him to put them on his window and mirror as a compromise. Holes can be filled but when you rip a layer of paint and drywall off, it’s not quite as easy to fix.
Otherwise, my son doesn’t have any posters but an assortment of other stuff definitely adorns his walls (among them: a snowboard, skateboards that we turned into shelves and a drum head).
Techmom
February 2nd, 2012
2:24 pm
Growing up in old-school military housing with concrete walls, I pretty much taped everything up since you can’t use tacks or nails. We were never allowed to paint our rooms so basically I used that as an excuse to rip up every Teen Bop magazine and plaster the pages to my walls. Of course we also didn’t have the amazing sticky stuff that 3M makes back then so I was constantly re-taping stuff when it fell down.
motherjanegoose
February 2nd, 2012
2:27 pm
@ I love: not sure if you are poking fun of me….you do realize that would be two sentences like you just posted and that is not a story.
@Momsrule…my sister told me that their Pastor had a sermon series on families. She said she bawled at many of them since she realized what went wrong growing up. You cannot fix the past…just move on and do what you can. I have made plenty of mistakes but hopefully the good parts will overcome the bad.
FCM
February 2nd, 2012
2:58 pm
I put up two very large corkboards in their rooms and in the Playroom. They are welcome to tack up as many pictures, notes, or whatever on those boards as they like. They can tape posters to the door of their rooms. That seems to have controlled the issue.
FCM
February 2nd, 2012
3:04 pm
Oh and I think the one my mom hated most in my room was the 12 Bud cans with “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like”…….so it was money well spent as I thougt it was stupid cool, couldn’t drink beer, and knew it would annoy my mom.
My taste in beer improved slightly…..My taste in art more so.
Stacey
February 2nd, 2012
3:42 pm
My son has a few posters on his wall that are held up with scotch tape and like Techmom’s kid, he also decorated with stickers without me knowing. I was mad at first but quickly got over it because it’s his room and if we ever have to sell, the stickers on the wall is the least of the redecorating needed. I did make him limit the stickers to a small area. Funny thing is, the stickers are mostly the little “PAID” or “B.Y.O.B.” stickers that they have at the grocery store and the bagger would give him (he would be heartbroken if they didn’t stick one on his shirt). Now that he has outgrown his sticker phase he just taped a poster up to cover them.
Growing up, we had wood paneling in our house but we had posters scotch taped to our bedroom walls. My sister and I shared a room and she had posters of singers either came from “Word Up” magazine or out of the album jackets (I know I’m dating myself). I used to order books every couple months from Weekly Reader at school and they often came with a free poster so I had a hodge-podge on my side of the room.
Lori
February 2nd, 2012
4:19 pm
We’ve got a mix in my son’s room. He has a few things tacked up, like his calendar and some small items. But he also has a magnetic dry erase board that he can stick things too. Then we have some stuff put up with the sticky putty. I try to minimize the holes in the wall, but I’m not overly worried about it. We have wall putty and extra paint if it get out of hand.
Denise
February 2nd, 2012
4:33 pm
I had every New Edition cut out from magazines and the Michael Jackson “Human Nature” poster on my door….with many strips of tape. Prince was not allowed because he was always in an “inappropriate for a young girl” picture. Mama put ugly wall paper up in my room that she didn’t want stuff on so it was basically the door. @Stacey – I LOVED Word Up magazine. (What was the other one? If you bought Word Up you had to have bought this one but I can’t think of the name.)
TCH
February 2nd, 2012
5:01 pm
@ Denise
The other magazine was “Fresh”
Denise
February 2nd, 2012
5:34 pm
@TCH – YES!!! I loved that one too.
jarvis
February 2nd, 2012
5:36 pm
Hope they stopped Farah on her way out of the grocery. Looks like she was trying to shoplift some raisins.
jarvis
February 2nd, 2012
5:42 pm
@MJG, I’m very sorry to hear stories about you childhood. You have done amazingly well. Lesser people would be really damaged from growing up like you did.
DB
February 2nd, 2012
6:45 pm
Thumbtacks were ok, but if something was heavy enough to need a nail, my mom wanted my dad to hang it, to avoid pulling a hold out of the drywall. :-) I decorated with abandon . . . never got a peep about the walls.
Never bothered me, either, if the kids put things up. My daughter was a little chagrined when she got to college and everything had to go up using those pull-tab things.
JATL
February 2nd, 2012
7:42 pm
My room was a shrine to Rick Springfield -tacked up pictures and posters EVERYWHERE! I don’t mind and won’t care if my boys do it. I don’t care if they put up posters of hot girls -don’t most heterosexual teenage boys want posters of hot girls in their rooms? Maybe they’ll want hot guys. Whatever, as long as they don’t knock holes in the wall, I don’t care.
K's Mom
February 2nd, 2012
8:36 pm
I was allowed to do as I pleased in my closet (it was fairly large), but no posters, tape or tacks on the walls in my room. I always had pretty rooms, so it did not bother me.
K has a cork board for arts and crafts from MMO and church and we will stick with the no tacks and tape in the dry wall since I do most of the repainting in our house.
Anj
February 2nd, 2012
11:08 pm
Sure!
I even have a space on the kitchen wall for posting pictures, assignments my kids did well on, and anything else they want recognition for. It gets cleared every month so we tape up new things. It’s our “Wall”.
djm_NC
February 3rd, 2012
7:05 am
well i havent posted in a while and now i did and poof its gone lol…can you find it theresa?
djm_NC
February 3rd, 2012
7:08 am
i also did let my youngest daughter paint her room black….i was worried about the depression thing so the condition of the black walls was that the trim had to be pink lol…soo she immediately went and bought all HIM (band) stuff which was hot pink and black motif…..i also let her friends write stuff on the inside of her closeet door…kind of like a pre=facebook in real life lol….when we moved she took the door :)
djm_NC
February 3rd, 2012
7:23 am
ive never heard of magnetized pain…that is awesome!! ill have to tell my daughter…she and her husband have a fridge that wont hold magnets and it drives her nuts…she grew up with magnets on the fridge…
djm_NC
February 3rd, 2012
7:24 am
paint lol
homeschooler
February 3rd, 2012
8:47 am
I’m very laid back and I like for my kids to have some self expression so I usually let them hang stuff up. I always regret it. Sure you can touch it up and paint but it seems the walls always look awful for about 2 or 3 years between the time the holes start to be noticeable and you get around to fixing and painting. I painted my daughter’s room a year ago and this time said, “no tacks in the wall, only on the cork boards.” Seems to have worked. My mother and I created a great cork board for my son. I bought some plain cork board squares (1ftx1ft) We pained them in different colors that match his room and then hung them up in a large square leaving about 3/4 inch between each one. It was easy, cheap and looks great. Still this was before my rule about no tacks, so, he has another wall that is covered with about 20 holes b/c he keeps replacing his calendar. Drives me crazy.
BTW Soccer MILF’s post cracked me up. I think she (he?) was being sarcastic but the first thing I thought of when I read the post was “I’d rather my son have pics of hot girls than pics of hot guys.” AND my son did draw an Obama target once for bb gun practice.
Augusta
February 3rd, 2012
9:46 am
Why can’t I see all the comments…..it was like this all day yesterday and now I still got nothing…All the other blogs are coming through ok…..why not these?
Jeff
February 3rd, 2012
9:56 am
Absolutely! Let kids be kids.
Wayne
February 3rd, 2012
9:58 am
We got the pain, errr… paint at our local hardware store. We heard about it on one of those DIY shows. It’s pretty cool. The plan is to paint one of the kitchen doors (closet) and put some molding around it to make it look a) neat, and b) like a bulletin board.
Why send them to YMCA
February 3rd, 2012
10:03 am
No new blog for today? Why?
JOD
February 3rd, 2012
10:25 am
@Wayne – I want to do that in the hall by the laundry room with chalkboard paint. Maybe I could do both :o)
K's mom
February 3rd, 2012
10:37 am
@JOD are you on Pinterest? I have seen several things this week on there about Chalk Board/Magnetic Paint in laundry rooms and pantries. They all look cool and uncluttered.
Wayne
February 3rd, 2012
10:42 am
I have to check but I think the paint we bought does both. It’s black, and has the metal in it. It’s heavy, I can tell you that. I’ve got a quart of it. I’d suggest getting it mixed and using it right away. We didn’t do that. We bought the oldest a rock tumbler for Christmas and plan on using that to mix up the paint. Whenever we get roundtuit.
JOD
February 3rd, 2012
10:51 am
@K’s mom – I’m not, but so many people I know are that I should check it out!
@Wayne – That would be cool! 2 birds, 1 paint brush…
K's mom
February 3rd, 2012
10:59 am
@JOD, be prepared for it to be like crack for the first day or two because you find so many interesting ideas and things. However, after a few days you get things set up to where you just go on to look for something specific. I am a designer and home stager and have found so many cool things on there. Plus I have now instituted using a new recipe once a week from there to get out of the cooking rut.
Penguinmom
February 3rd, 2012
11:22 am
tape is one of my youngest child’s favorite thing (he even received a tape dispenser for Christmas one year). So we have pictures taped on many walls of the house. He tapes up posters, drawings, targets, foam creations. Pretty much anything he likes could end up taped to one of his walls (or occasionally the hallway). He even tapes drawings to the underside of the upper bunk so he can look at them as he goes to sleep.
The room I had as a young girl was Holly Hobbie like pictures of little girls with bonnets on. When I got older, my mother help me cover the entire wall with posters from World magazine and a few larger ones we picked up elsewhere.
Becky
February 3rd, 2012
11:56 am
@Penguimom..Mine too..Not sure how old your child is, but mine is nine and he loves tape..Tape and paper..He goes thru about 2-3 rolls of tape per week..He makes ships..All shapes, all sizes…
My two aren’t really into putting a lot of things on the walls yet..But I did come home about 3 weeks ago and the girl had taped about 6 or 9 of her Goosebumps books on her wall and called it a “wall of doom”..
I don’t care if they stick things on the wall, they are only young once and most all of it can be fixed at some point..
Wayne
February 3rd, 2012
12:14 pm
LOL ‘wall of doom’ My son was calling school the ‘Torture Palace’ last year. Kids can certainly crack you up at times.
Using the word "flotsam"
February 3rd, 2012
1:02 pm
OK…..I just got done punching myself because there is not a new blog to comment on.
What is wrong? Can’t you see us suffering?
Maybe Theresa is with her new boyfriend!
Penguinmom
February 3rd, 2012
2:05 pm
@becky, he is 8 but he’s had this avid interest in tape since he was 6 (when he got the tape dispenser). Tape, boxes, paper, random pieces of plastic… whatever he can get his hands on becomes a creative contraption. His sister just recently got several rolls of Duct Tape (it comes in a huge number of interesting patterns now) so he purchased some as well. She made a case for her iPod-like device. My son made a sword, boat, and various other things.
I figure it is a reasonable balance to his video game obsession. At least this doesn’t involve staring at blinking lights on a screen.
of all days
February 3rd, 2012
3:15 pm
Why is it like this every Friday? A new blog should be posted EVERY day!!!