What Displaying Family Photographs At Home Does For Your Mental Health

Would you display family photos at your new home? After six months of waiting, I got the key to my brand-new home last month.

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 Woot woot! It was among the most significant projects I could ever take on in my life, considering I poured all my savings into it.

The house meant two things for me. Firstly, I managed to prove that I did not need a man to become a homeowner. Many women got hitched early just so they wouldn’t need to worry about housing and other issues, but I did not want to do that. I always said that I was a strong, independent woman, and that’s what I showed everyone.

Secondly, it was a reward for all my hard work since I started working full-time at 19 years old while also going to college full-time. Most people around me said that I might need to give up one of them eventually because it was rare to find success when your attention was divided into major tasks. I proved them all wrong when I graduated as a Summa cum Laude and earned a managerial position at work. Hence, I was only 25 years old when I bought a piece of land in the neighborhood and built my house in it two years later.

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My Mother’s Two Cents

My parents were the happiest – perhaps happier than me – when I brought them to the construction site for the first time. Dad hugged me tightly and repeatedly said that he’s proud of me; Mom cried so hard, uttering praises to God for blessing me with intelligence and a good job. When they accompanied me on the day that the contractor handed over the keys, Mom cried some more until we toured the still-empty house and asked her how I should decorate it. I already bought the couch and bed and other furniture – I was merely lost when it came to decorative items.

Mom replied, “You can add whatever decoration you want because it’s your house, not anyone else’s, but you should have family photos on display, too.”

At first, I wanted to protest about having a family photo display. I was a single woman at my prime; I thought it would be awkward to bring a man home after a date and make him see a gallery wall of cheesy old family photos I had since childhood. But since I asked for my mother’s opinion – and she did not volunteer it – it would be rude not to indulge her with a few family photos (not a gallery wall) in the living room. Perhaps I can display family photos in my home office too. I just made sure to use Velcro tape to remove the display photos quickly if I ended up not liking them.

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How My Favorite Family Photos Displayed Soothed My Mental Health

Inhabiting my new home meant that I had to move out of my parents’ house for good. And though it was only a 30-minute drive away, I still felt a little depressed, knowing that I would not wake up to my mom’s delicious meals in the dining room every day. My family members would not always be there, so a photo display actually made a difference. Thankfully, each family photo was there to remind me of the sweet and fun times that we had together. Even when we could not FaceTime or visit each other, I would still see their smiling faces if I turned my gaze on the photo wall in my office or walked around the hallway and saw the mini gallery wall of my favorite photos.

I initially thought that the display family photos on a gallery wall would curb my desirability in front of potential male partners, but the photo display genuinely helped me weed out the guys who wanted nothing more than a one-night stand.  After all, the family photo display on the gallery wall showed how much I valued family, so it likely meant that I would not put it out for anyone (which was true). If I was honest, that’s how I attracted my current boyfriend, John, who also dreamed of building a family of his own shortly.

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One of the things I dreaded about owning a house was entertaining guests because I had never done that – I feared that they would want to leave after 30 minutes out of boredom. However, I realized that the family photo display (on the mini gallery wall and cute identical picture frames) worked well as a conversation starter as people would go straight to them and ask me what we were doing in those natural and real moments. When my coworkers came for the first time, they even made a game out of my baby pictures on the family photo wall space. They picked out each old family photo in the photo display, figuring out how old I was in them.

Soon enough, I found myself printing more family photos and putting them in matching picture frames and original and stylish decor of rectangular photo frames. I even bought a piano that looked like what my parents had in the family room so that I could arrange the black frames on top of the photos. It was a little piece of home away from home, and even my mother loved it. She said, “I can see you decorating your place with more photos once you have a family of your own.”

The best thing is there are so many ways to display family photos on your gallery wall. You can have a gallery wall full of photo displays. You can have white photos and a photo gallery in the dining room, or you can have a photo wall of picture frames in the living room. You can also pick frames that suit your ideas and decor criteria: a photo display of picture frames in horizontal and vertical positions, picture frames in the dining room with black and white photos, and a few floral decorations here and there. You can have a white gallery wall or photo wall full of small photos organized beautifully too!

If you’re not fond of having a photo display or gallery wall in the dining room, you can have a photo wall somewhere else in the house instead. You can go with black and white photos, color photos, random picture frames on the photo wall, whatever you want! The best thing is there are no rules when it comes to displaying photos on your own black and white gallery wall. You can have a photo display, such as displaying family photos at home, however, your heart wants it.

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Hmm, although I have no idea when I can add those types of black and white photos to my photo wall – I think I am still too young to settle down – I can tell that Mom’s prediction was not far off. That’s especially true now that I have seen the beauty of displaying family photos at home in wall spaces as part of the interior design.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

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