Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter
Free Art
In my old building, the super had a gallery of sorts: He’d salvaged all the framed prints, posters and paintings that tenants had discarded over the years and hung them on the walls of the passageway leading to the garbage area behind the building. It was a mixed bag, and it lent a little character to the painted concrete walls, but I always wondered how some of the artists would feel if they knew their discarded work had been saved from the trash to live in this odd museum.
Art, framed prints, water colors and endless framed family photos: I have seen them all, scores of them, in droves, and they can be problematic.
Framing is expensive, so maybe you’ve kept the framed poster from the Met that hung in your first apartment, and all those watercolors you collected in your 30s. Maybe you thought that signed etching or numbered print might become valuable some day. Maybe you can’t imagine parting with even a few of those photos of your kids, because, well, they’re your kids.
Then one day you take everything down to paint, and the expanse of wall is soothing, or maybe the decorator tells you that what you need is one large piece… whatever the situation, suddenly you have all these framed things that aren’t going back on the wall.
Framed art and pictures are something my clients seem to store indefinitely, but the truth is you never go back: Once you’ve graduated from posters to paintings, you aren’t going back. People say, “Oh, I’ll just store it, it doesn’t take that much room.” But it does. Frames are bulky, fragile and susceptible to both heat and damp. If you’ve moved on, set your old art free: Sell it if it has more than sentimental value, or donate it—let someone decorating their first apartment be thrilled to discover it at the Goodwill. But for heaven’s stake, don’t pay to store it while it deteriorates! Don’t store it in your hot, stuffy attic or damp, moldy basement, either. Remove family photos from the frames, put them in an acid-free box and donate the frames.
One thing we need more of in this world is beauty; so don’t hoard it, set it free!