Hudson designer publishes retro-styled book aimed at streamlining homes
by Charles Cassady

It may look like a 1950s-style cookbook, but local author Sharon Kreighbaum’s literary effort is all about losing the bulk – and not in the food sense.

Is Your House Overweight? is Kreighbaum’s lavishly illustrated, retro-looking hardcover how-to guide (with “recipes”) to a simpler, more streamlined home, condo or apartment layout.

Local business owner

Sharon Kreighbaum

turned her love

of downsized design

into a book. 

The Hudson resident, currently on a circuit of library appearances, comes uniquely qualified to advise readers how to cut back on hoardings and non-essentials and renovate old catch-alls into elegant living space. Kreighbaum studied interior design and fashion merchandising at The University of Akron. She has been doing professional arrangings and interior designs for more than 20 years and is registered with the National Association of Professional Organizers.

Kreighbaum’s business, Staged Makeovers, redecorates and re-organizes homes that are coming up for sale. “I’ve done all the way out to Avon and Avon Lake,” she said. “I do all the ‘heights’ – Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights. I’ve done Kent, all of Akron.”

Kreighbaum said she had an inside track with the field. “I really started redesign for realtors 20 years ago, before there was ‘staging.’” It was such an unfamiliar concept she had to explain it to many home-sellers before setting about straightening, streamlining and organizing.

The home stagings led to Is Your House Overweight?

“It did grow out of Staged Makeovers,” Kreighbaum said. Over the course of de-cluttering and redecorating homes, she would meet sellers who wished they had used her services earlier, not to move but to enjoy their homes. Their general reaction: “‘Oh my gosh! If only I knew this before, I would have lived much better!’”

People began calling upon Kreighbaum well in advance of planning to sell their homes; they wanted them re-arranged for quality of life. Knowing that not everyone could afford the services of a professional for visits and consultations, “I just decided I’m going to put it into book form.”

Is Your House Overweight? recommends rampant recycling of old catalogs, saying goodbye to unnecessary stuff like souvenirs or trophies and selling off (or donating for tax write-offs) those personal collections. Just hiding stuff in garages, basements and the dreaded, spare storage room are not ingredients in this dish.

A cluttered environment, Kreighbaum said, is a stressful one. A clean one encourages imagination and productivity. And the residents? “They felt better about themselves. They started to lose weight,” she said.

This is Kreighbaum’s first book. She shopped her initial manuscript around commercial publishers but found even if they would take her text they had their own concepts of layout and presentation. “I decided to self-publish, because I’m an interior designer, and I love vintage.” She said the 1950s in particular had a nostalgic ambiance she wanted to evoke on the page. “It’s just a time when people appreciated beauty more. They just spent more time and effort to make things look beautiful. Even the cars looked like works of art.”

Kreighbaum decided to create her own Heather Lane imprint and bring out Is Your Home Overweight? with complete creative control, and she had a vintage-literate team to do it.

Richard Lucas is a Renaissance man, she said, out of Los Angeles. The graphic artist and web designer as well as a stand-up comic and an actor turned up on her Web query for “vintage designers” during a Staged Makeovers website makeover. “I was totally impressed by all his work. And believe it or not, he does book layouts. As an English major, he could work on my manuscript with me. It was perfect.”

The other collaborator was a local illustrator from Akron, Justin Campbell. He has an Interior Design degree from The University of Akron. He also works for the Akron Art Museum and designs fashion. Campbell’s cast of 1950s-style females (and a mouse) recur throughout the book to offer observations and advice on de-cluttering.

Kreighbaum confesses that she too has had her own problems with accumulated possessions and had to learn to cut down. “Being that I’m very artsy and into interior design, I have to surround myself with things of beauty,” she said. Furthermore, she came from a family of builders, engineers and carpenters, who never threw anything out in case it would come in handy someday. So, for one of the before-and-after photo comparisons, Kreighbaum said, “my office is the office in the book.”

Is Your House Overweight? came out in November 2011. Since then the author has worked scattered engagements into her work schedule. She has appeared with the book at the Learned Owl bookstore and the Rocky River Author Festival. Her spring circuit is making the rounds of the various branches of the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Strongsville, Maple Heights, Orange, Parma and elsewhere.

For more on Sharon Kreighbaum’s business and her book, including updates, appearances and an “overweight home” blog, go to the nifty-fifties website StagedMakeovers.com

Ditch the stress Declutter and organize to make a fresh start this year

Ditch the stress
Declutter and organize to make a fresh start this year
By Mary Beth Breckenridge, McClatchy-Tribune News January 27, 2012

Chances are good that decluttering and getting organized was on your list of New Year’s resolutions. Congratulations. At least you were organized enough to make a list. Now you need to keep that promise to yourself.

Professional organizer Jamie Escola, left, helps
homeowner Marcia Cianchetti rid her home of clutter.
Experts say don’t try to organize your whole house
at once, but rather do it a bit at a time. Set a timed
goal, for example 15 minutes a day, and fill just
one box with things to throw away or give away.
Photograph by: KAREN SCHIELY, MCT

Organizing is about changing behaviour, not buying stuff. Stores seduce us this time of year with displays of bins and drawer dividers and file boxes, but resist the urge to buy them in the misguided belief that they’ll make you organized. They won’t, at least not by themselves. To get organized, you first need to create a system and then stick to it.

Instead of rushing out to the store in the first flush of organizing fever, spend some time getting rid of what you don’t need and figuring out how you’re going to use and store the rest. Once you know exactly what you have and what you need, you can buy or make organizing tools that support your system and fit your space.

Clutter results from indecision and indecision results from not having thought through how to handle the stuff that’s an inevitable part of our lives, says Sharon Kreighbaum, author of Is Your House Overweight? Recipes for Low-Fat Rooms. One of the keys to Kreighbaum’s approach is assigning everything a home, which should be where you use the item or where you need it — your purse and cellphone near the door, for instance, and your dishes within reach of the dishwasher.

If you don't like an item of clothing now,
chances are you probably won't ever,
so give it away.

If you don’t like an item of clothing now, chances are you probably won’t ever like it, so give it away.

Kreighbaum also recommends deciding which activities you want to happen regularly in each room, then keep in it only the items that support those activities. In a kitchen, for example, that might mean putting the everyday items in easy reach, storing seldom-used serving pieces in less accessible spots and finding other homes for backpacks, mail, paperwork and other things that tend to accumulate there.

Organized does not mean neat and tidy, says Chris Perrow of Perrow Systems in Stow, Ohio. Organization, she says, is simply being able to find what you want when you want it.

It’s OK if your receipts are jumbled in a shoebox instead of arranged neatly in folders or your rolls of gift-wrapping ribbon are kept in a plastic bin instead of being threaded onto a hanging rod and grouped by colour. As long as you can find what you need quickly and without a lot of effort, you’re organized.

Try keeping a family binder, suggests organizing guru Deniece Schofield, who’s known for making organization simple and achievable. She recommends getting a three-ring binder to keep all the papers your family needs — things like sports schedules, school calendars and committee rosters.

Use dividers to sort the papers into categories and consider investing in a box of plastic sheet protectors to hold the papers so you don’t have to drag out the paper punch every time you want to add something to the binder. A few business-card sleeves to hold the cards of contractors and service providers you use can save untold time and aggravation.

If you use a desktop file system to organize the papers you use often, choose one that holds the file folders vertically rather than horizontally. You’d be surprised how much more likely you are to put papers into their proper place if you can just drop them into the top of a folder rather than taking out the folder, opening it and putting it back.

Recycle storage containers missing a lid or
a bottom.
Photograph by: KAREN SCHIELY, MCT

Over-the-door shoe organizers aren’t just for shoes. I have one in my coat closet and I store all our hats, gloves and scarves in its pockets. I’ve also seen them used for clothing accessories such as scarves and belts and the kind with see-through plastic pockets are great for small toys, hair or sewing accessories, craft supplies, hardware and similar items.

Know the difference between needs and wants, says author and organizer Jennifer Lovins. Whenever you see something you’re tempted to buy, ask yourself whether you really need it. If the answer is no, think twice about how badly you really want it. No matter how organized you are, too much stuff will weigh you down and make you feel stressed, says Mandi Ehman, co-author of All in Good Time: When to Save, Stock Up, and Schedule Everything for Your Home.

Since decluttering can be overwhelming, Ehman and co-author Tara Kuczykowski recommend starting small.

“You don’t have to declutter the whole house tomorrow,” says Ehman.

“Set a timed goal of maybe 15 minutes a day and fill just one box with things to throw away or give away. Or you can set a goal of giving away three things a day. Once you start decluttering it’s an addictive kind of thing.”

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Book Review at WarriorMama.com!

Lisa Woodfruff at "Warrior Mama" has written a wonderful review of my book:

"Is Your House Overweight is a funny and practical guide to putting your house on a diet through de-cluttering!...

I love the “girl friend” feel you get as you read this vintage inspired story of Barbara, Betty and Bob. It’s like an adult picture book!"

You should check out her blog at WarriorMama.com - it's fun and well-organized, as well as informative and inspirational!

Book Review from The Chattanoogan.com

Is Your House Overweight? 
Getting Rid Of Clutter Can Help Make Resolution To Lose Weight Come True, New Book Says
by Judy Frank
posted January 6, 2012

Decluttering is good for houses, as these before and after photos demonstrate, and for the people who live in them, according to author/interior decorator Sharon Kreighbaum.
It’s another new year, and once again you have resolved to – what else? – lose those extra pounds and inches!

Decluttering is good for houses, as these
before and after photos demonstrate,
and for the people who live in them,
according to author/interior
decorator Sharon Kreighbaum.

Decluttering is good for houses, as these before and after photos demonstrate, and for the people who live in them, according to author/interior decorator Sharon Kreighbaum.

Sharon Kreighbaum thinks she and her colorful, fun-to-read new book can help you there and, along the way, enable you to say goodbye a lot of the other excess baggage that’s been cramping your style.

Decluttering not only helps lower stress, she believes; it also frees up mental and physical space and makes it easier to tackle good-for-you activities such as preparing, and leisurely eating, healthier meals.

The author, an interior decorator who has spent the past 20 years helping people stage their homes to make them pleasanter to live in and/or easier to sell, doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that many of her clients transformed themselves into slimmer, happier people as they worked through the decluttering process.

Her book, “Is Your House Overweight? Recipes For Low-Fat Rooms” – which hit online and store shelves just a couple of months ago – explains how they did it, and how you can follow in their footsteps.

Crammed with vintage ’50s-style illustrations and pages filled with large before-and-after photos of basements and kitchens and numerous other rooms she’s transformed, the book’s chatty approach has a “yes-you-can-do-this” attitude that just might provide the swift kick you needed to help make this new year’s resolution actually happen.

“People who have lots of clutter are often overweight themselves,” the author observes. “(Both) things and food are used to fill emotional voids . . . The Staged Makeovers Diet encourages getting rid of everything you don’t need and giving it to others.”

Think it can’t be done?

Think again, Ms. Kreighbaum advises. Hotel and bed-and-breakfast owners throughout the world have proven time and again that eliminating the items guests don’t really need in their rooms helps them relax and enjoy themselves.

“Live like you’re on vacation,” she advises. “Who wouldn’t like to spend more time on vacation – no cares, no worries, surrounded by nice stuff but less stuff – less stuff to clean, less stuff to store, less stuff to move around?”

Tackle decluttering systematically, the book urges readers. Pick out a room and then begin to remove all those things that aren’t used regularly, don’t belong or just plain aren’t needed.

And start small, Ms. Kreighbaum advises: bringing order to an overflowing closet or a drawer crammed so full it will barely open can be the perfect first step on a slow-but-sure journey to making your home, and your life, a lot more enjoyable.

Interview in The Chicago Tribune

Home, lean home: Designers, builders resolve to lose extra house flab

Designers, builders resolve to lose extra house flab

• 

Proponents of the Not So Big House philosophy favor rooms tailored to casual… (HANDOUT)

January 09, 2012|By Jeffrey Steele, Special to the Tribune

Have you resolved to go on a diet and shed pounds in the new year? Why not also put your home on a diet in 2012?

It makes sense, said Sharon Kreighbaum, author of the new book "Is Your House Overweight? Recipes for Low-Fat Rooms" and owner of Staged Makeovers in Hudson, Ohio. When a house is overweight, it feels uncomfortable and sluggish and weighs on occupants, said the interior designer and home stager.

"It creates stress, due to not being able to find things," Kreighbaum said. "You buy another (item) and wind up with a lot of duplicates. You feel defeated in not being able to make a decision as to where to put things. Being uncomfortable with too much becomes overwhelming."

Builders and architects seem to have gotten the message that homes need to shed fat. They're building houses that start out and stay leaner, said Jennifer Ames, a broker at Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage Gold Coast in Chicago.

For example, North Carolina architect Sarah Susanka, famed for her Not So Big House philosophy, recently unveiled a showcase home reflecting that approach at SchoolStreet Homes in Libertyville. The house forgoes unused formal rooms for spaces tailored to casual lifestyles that focus on functionality and flexibility. Characteristic features include built-ins, window seats, alcoves and nooks.

Addressing the bloat starts with sacrificing quantity but not quality. Many homes have downsized or eliminated less-used spaces like living rooms and dining rooms, Ames noted.

"I'm also seeing empty nesters getting more pragmatic about how often their children will visit," she said. "Providing bedrooms for the once-a-year visit just doesn't make sense."

A small utility room off the garage or back door can do wonders for reining in clutter when a family enters and leaves the home, said Kim Cosentino, owner of De-Clutter Box, a Westmont home-organizing company.

Organization solutions for this area include benches, floor-to-ceiling storage space, built-in shelves for sports equipment and backpacks, coat hooks and spots for recharging cellphones.

Kitchen solutions

Newer home designs recognize people congregate in the kitchen, the heart of the home. An adjoining hearth room with a fireplace and comfortable seating can eliminate the need for living rooms and family rooms, Kreighbaum said.

A built-in eating area in the kitchen gives a homeowner more usable space than a formal dining room.

For storage needs, drawers are replacing shelves in the lower cupboards, allowing everything stored within cupboards to be pulled out when needed, Cosentino said.

Some of the best ideas in creating leaner kitchens are the simplest.

"Fewer cabinets, but larger and wider cabinets, can afford you more flexibility and more storage opportunities," said Sarah Reep, product specialist with Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Masco Cabinetry.

"I'd rather have one 30-inch-wide than two 16-inch-wide cabinets. And that saves you money, because one cabinet is more affordable than two."

Similarly, a 36-inch-wide drawer will accommodate a much wider range of items than standard 12-, 15- or 18-inch-wide drawers, Reep said.

Media rooms

Dens common in older homes are being supplanted with media/computer rooms, said Cheryl Daugvila, kitchen designer and owner of Cheryl D & Co. in La Grange. The firm helps builders such as Westmont's Recon Construction build more efficient homes.

Computers, printers, computer games and everyday books inhabit these rooms, which feature drawer-like pullouts that hide computer wiring and printers within cabinets for a tidy appearance.

Builders once included bathroom closets, but "we're taking them out and designing bathrooms around bathroom-oriented tasks," Daugvila said. "We've incorporated specialty pull-outs for items like hair blowers and flatirons that are always plugged in, and nest in heat-resistant bins or cups in cabinets."

Bedroom design is taking advantage of 9- and 10-foot-high ceilings to feature pull-down clothes rods within closets.

"The whole thing is hinged and totally doubles your hanging space," Daugvila said. "(It's ideal) for things that are more seasonal or more secondary. We build these pull-downs into closets."

Hidden potential

Tucked away until needed, Murphy beds and hidden ironing boards maximize space in smaller homes.

"(Hidden ironing boards) look nice, are hidden behind a door, are self-contained with all your starch, iron and sleeve board, and they're designed to sit right within that 16-inch space between wall studs," Daugvila said.

One of the best-selling models at Meritus Homes' Creekside at Inverness Ridge is the smallest. The absence of unneeded rooms and features in the three-bedroom, two-bath Marquis ranch plan appeals to buyers, said Brian Brunhofer, president of the Deerfield-based builder.

"The floor plan has a very large, open great room that eliminates need for a living room," he said. "It lives very well, is very open, but has the needed features of homes people look for today."

Once you have a home with "low-fat rooms," it's a matter of resolving to keep them from getting bloated, Kreighbaum said. Store items only in rooms where they're used, keep nothing but a coffee maker on kitchen counters and use clear plastic organizing bins with labels for storage, she said.

The benefits of a slimmed-down house can be remarkable. Kreighbaum had a client with a kitchen so cluttered it couldn't be used for food preparation. The family ate out or ordered in. Once the kitchen shed fat, the family started cooking at home.

Said Kreighbaum, "The entire family lost weight."

Expert helps South Euclid's Pauline Nance declutter: Full House

SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio -- Pauline Nance's immaculate gold-and-cream living room couldn't possibly belong to a woman with a clutter problem.

"Just wait until you see upstairs," harrumphed her husband, Henry. "Upstairs" was the room that needed professional help from Inside & Out's informal anti-clutter contest.

After reading "Is Your House Overweight? Recipes for Low-Fat Rooms" (Heather Lane Publishing, 2011), a new book by Hudson interior designer Sharon Kreighbaum, I thought that it would be fun to see her strategies in action. I asked readers for photos and brief descriptions of their messy rooms, and I received about 20 entries.

Sharon specializes in staged makeovers, which means she helps homeowners prepare their homes for sale by getting rid of clutter. She wrote her book based on a 20-year career spent seeing how slimming down possessions improved families' lives. Her mantra is, if you don't love it, need it or use it, then get rid of it.

Pauline Nance's attic -- afterWatch video

"It makes people's lives better, and they love it," she said. "Is Your House Overweight?" is available in bookstores and through Sharon's website.

Sharon and I selected Pauline's South Euclid home for our project because she wasn't a hoarder (those folks were beyond a quick fix) and was willing to purge items. The goal was to see how much a team could accomplish in one day.

When Sharon and her husband, Mark, arrived at Nance's home, we trooped upstairs to see the large atticlike room. Four double clothes racks and about 40 hatboxes -- labeled with things like "Grey Straw," "Purple Winter" and "New Red" -- dominated the space.

All around were items we all toss into storage areas: empty cardboard boxes, wrapping paper, mystery shopping bags, children's chairs, a window fan in its box, emergency Christmas presents, an Easter basket, a calendar from 1987.

Pauline said she would love to replace the battered orange carpeting and host card parties up there the way she used to. Neither could happen until the room was cleaned up.

I assumed that the clothes were passed down from relatives or no longer fit. But Nance said the classic outfits and dressy hats were the result of decades of shopping, and she regularly wears them to church.

"All of that is mine. I'm halfway ashamed," Pauline said.

Sharon explained that we would identify zones and clean them one at a time. Pauline's job was to decide if each item was something she loved, needed or used. Things that failed the test would be bagged for donation or the trash.

"We want you to end up with what you love," Sharon said.

Sharon helped Pauline make decisions and organize the room so that Pauline would be able to see what she had. Mark's job was taking filled bags out of our way. I scribbled notes in between filling bags, and Henry kept Mark company downstairs.

Tips for decluttering your home

Here are a few decluttering tips from Hudson interior designer Sharon Kreighbaum, author of "Is Your House Overweight? Recipes for Low-Fat Rooms."

• Store purses on hangers, and hang them on a clothes rod so you can see them.


• Don't keep empty boxes. If you do keep a few, fold them flat for easy storage.


• Organize items so that nothing is hidden, or out of view or reach. Store like things together so that you can see how many you have.


• If you're not sure if you should pitch an item, put it in a box and mark it with the date. If you still haven't used it in a year, you can live without it.


• Don't hang on to old clothes hoping you will fit into them again. By the time you lose weight, they'll be out of style.


• Looking for places to donate gently used items? Look for thrift stores and resale and consignment shops in your neighborhood by using the Yellow Pages or going online.

You can find the locations of Goodwill Industries International Inc. (goodwill.com) and the Salvation Army (salvationarmyusa.com) thrift stores on the organizations' websites.

To get rid of unwanted computer equipment, contact RET3 Job Corp. (216-361-9991 or ret3.org), or Computers Assisting People (216-781-8227).

If you want to sell items, try eBay, Craig's List or The Plain Dealer's classified ad section (216-999-5555).

Sharon shrugged out of her jacket and walked over to a corner clogged with stacks of dusty vinyl records, an old television set, mystery shopping bags, used photo frames and, of course, hatboxes.

Pauline -- a semiretired elementary-school cook -- hesitated to donate a pair of Chinese-style vases because she wasn't sure who would want them. Sharon assured her not to worry, saying, "You know that someone who loves it will find it."

"We haven't used it in so long," said Pauline, pointing to a stereo and old records. After a quick consultation with Henry, the couple decided the relics could go. It was obviously a big psychological step for them, and Sharon gave Pauline an excited hug.

As we worked, Pauline became decisive and confident. Out went stuffed animals, T-shirts, a shoe holder, games and a foot massager. A broken trophy hit the trash.

We uncovered new winter boots, still in the box, that Pauline didn't even know she had.

But a three-tier lazy Susan made of carved wood with pineapples on top -- a souvenir from the couple's trip to Hawaii -- was spared. "He won't let me get rid of it," Pauline sighed. She left it on a bookcase out of sight.

We took a lunch break around noon, and Pauline was amazed to see the garbage bags that had accumulated in the living room. "I can't believe it. All that couldn't have come from upstairs," she laughed.

EnlargeSpecial to The Plain DealerHudson interior designer Sharon Kreighbaum, who has written a book of decluttering tips, and South Euclid resident Pauline Nance joined forces to clean up Nance's clogged second-floor storage space. A crew of three completed the project in less than a day. (Al Fuchs Baylight Studio)Helping Pauline Nance declutter gallery (4 photos)

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Fortified by sandwiches and thick slices of Pauline's homemade pound cake, we headed back upstairs to tackle the clothes racks. Pauline yanked suits that no longer fit her husband, and that emptied a rack. Mark, armed with a screwdriver, dismantled and hauled it outside to await the garbage truck.

I was amazed by how much we were accomplishing in just one day and impressed by Sharon's strategies. Her best idea was to recruit a work crew and delegate tasks. Just having someone to take the bags away (especially if stairs are involved) and drive loads to the donation center saves time and lets the cleanup workers conserve energy. I made a mental list of friends I could bribe to help me organize my third floor in return for my famous lasagna and a "Doctor Who" viewing party.

Eleven donation bags and four trash bags later, we were standing in Sharon's beautifully organized, airy room. All it needed was a card table and chairs to be ready for entertaining.

The guys were impressed. The women beamed and hugged. And it was just 2:30 p.m. -- we'd finished early.

"It's a world of difference -- my, my, my!" Pauline exclaimed. "I just couldn't get to it myself. I just needed help, which I got today."

Then she said the words that made it all worthwhile: "We will play cards up here again."