You know the struggle of wanting to hang your tapestries, calendars, posters, and wall art without damaging the items or the walls. There’s no perfect solution, but there are some tricks that will help reduce the damage to one or the other, and in a few lucky cases, both.

Command strips: A favorite of college students and apartment dwellers who will lose significant money to a security deposit if there’s any damage to the walls, command strips are small foam tabs with a one-time adhesive that can easily be removed from walls without leaving behind any residue or gunk. For light-weight frames and wall decor, command strips are perfect for leaving both the wall and the item intact.

Clothespins: If you’re not quite as worried about the state of the wall, some tacks, string, and clothespins are all it takes to hang your pictures and posters without hurting the images at all. Nail or tack a few yards string or twine to the wall at about eye-level and use clothespins to hang up your photos, mementos, and other bric a brac in a shabby-chic fashion.

Binder clips: For items that will need to be taken down and put back up a lot (namely calendars, which I’ve written about before), binder clips offer a strong hold without worsening the hole in the top of the calendar or the weakening hole in the wall. Either hammer in a nail or append a command hook to the wall and hang your calendar by the binder clip to keep your walls safe from multiple gaping tac holes after every month.

Clothes pins plus command strips: For large cloth tapestries, you’ll need to be especially creative, since tears in the fabric could ruin a large piece of art irreparably. But by combining two of the previous strategies, you’ll be golden. Adhere command strips to 4-8 clothespins, and attach the pins to the wall near the ceiling in a straight line. You can guess the rest from here: Hang the tapestry by pinning it with the clothespins. This way, both the walls and the tapestry are safe.

Washi Tape: Perfectly wall and photo safe, washi tape has taken over craft stores as a way to safely decorate notebooks, vases, and any other household item you can imagine. Taping photos to the walls with washi tape allows for harmless removal and tape picture frames with patterns and colors of your choosing.
Grid Walls or Cork Boards: Rather than affix your pictures directly to the wall, you can purchase a large cork board or mesh grid wall and attach your mementos there. That way, your walls stay safe, and you can move and remove photos to your heart’s desire without damaging the mesh or the cork. Everyone wins.