How to Create a Wall of Gratitude

The hustle and bustle of the holiday season is already beginning. I don’t know about you, but I often spend more of my time thinking about and planning for upcoming events than I do relishing what those celebrations are meant to be about. Thanksgiving is a perfect example. My thoughts go to what food will need to be prepped and if the guest room is ready instead of taking time to celebrate all we have to be thankful for. If you are looking for ways to incorporate more gratitude into your Thanksgiving holiday this year, you’ll find ideas here and here to do just that.

Our family wanted to take it a step further and do something to help remind us to be grateful all year long. We needed a visual that would remind us of our blessings. We wanted to sustain this “attitude of gratitude” for more than just a holiday. In the process of discovering that we not only wanted but also needed gratitude to be more central in our home and hearts, we created a “Hall of Gratitude.” In essence, this hall of gratitude is simply a place to post reasons why we are grateful. We knew that these would change and multiply over time so we created something that could hold various items and be changed out with ease.

What to Include on a Wall of Gratitude: Whether it is a greeting card with a special message that meant a lot, a picture of precious family or friends, a record of making memories as a family, or handwritten words of what we are grateful for, this wall serves as a reminder of how we are blessed and encourages us to keep counting those blessings. Currently, we have a display of pictures from our trip of a lifetime that we still cannot believe we were able to take. We’ll swap these pictures out to create a visual timeline of our family members and family history or to post special cards reminding us of how we are loved and who we have in our lives.

Where to Put a Wall of Gratitude: We chose one hallway in our home that we walk through all of the time. We also chose this hallway to be upstairs so that it was more in a “private” part of our house but still visible. This way we could add things to our wall of gratitude that were personal to our family and not necessary for all visitors to see.

How to Display the Gratitude Reminders: Because we want gratitude to be part of the fabric of our family, we chose something permanent. Our permanent display involved installing two rows of Ikea curtain wires (Ikea Dignitet Drapes Curtain Wire Rod System) that come with clips designed to hang curtains. We installed two of the wires with one about a foot higher than the other. If we choose to, we can add more wires for more “rows” later. After installing the wires, we hung the clips on them and clipped our gratitude items on. You could also do a display that you just put up seasonally. This might be as simple as rows of yarn, string, or raffia hung with push pins with clothes pins attached. There are lots of ways you could do this depending on your style and preferences.

We love that our wall of gratitude changes as our blessings and season in life change. It is a fresh reminder of why we should be grateful. Let’s all learn to live with more gratitude this year. Are you with me? If you have other ways that you display gratitude in your home, I would love to hear how you do it!