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Silver Lake author wins My Ugly Home Office Contest and a redesign
By Mary Beth Breckenridge
Beacon Journal staff writer
POSTED: 07:22 a.m. EST, Jan 10, 2009
SILVER LAKE: As a children's author, Shelley Pearsall is accustomed to organizing her thoughts.
Papers, books and supplies, however, were another matter.
Pearsall's home office had become awash in disorganization — so much so that it was chosen the best of the worst in the recent My Ugly Home Office Contest, sponsored by the Cleveland-based Council of Smaller Enterprises' Home Business Network. Pearsall's entry was picked from more than 70 to win $3,000 worth of office furniture from Today's Business Products in Cleveland, as well as a one-year membership to COSE.
The office makeover is mostly complete, and already Pearsall is enjoying the results. So is her husband and assistant, Mike Winter, who described the old office as ''kind of scary'' and recalled having to tiptoe around piles on the floor just to get envelopes out of a cupboard.
Working in the office wasn't a joy for Pearsall, either. The room was dreary and poorly lighted, the file cabinets were crammed, and the disordered heaps of papers made finding things time-consuming.
Her work surface consisted of two tables, one of which had a broken computer keyboard drawer that would fall on her when she'd try to type. Things would tumble out of the closet when she'd open the door. And if she needed items for one of the writing workshops she presents at schools, she had to empty the closet, retrieve what she needed and then put everything away again.
''It really distracted me,'' she said. ''[The mess] may have reflected my creativity, but it didn't help it very much.''
Pearsall's problem stemmed from a combination of factors: inadequate furniture, insufficient storage and the lack of a system for dealing with the many documents and reference materials associated with her work.
Today's Business Products was able to help with the first two issues. One of its designers developed a floor plan and helped Pearsall choose furniture that would suit her needs, said John Quinones, the company's vice president.
He said that was a challenge, given the room's fairly small dimensions — not quite 10 by 12 feet. But they decided on an L-shaped desk with file drawers and an overhead storage hutch, along with a lateral file cabinet that provided storage space for documents, a work surface on top and a place to put a lamp.
Organizing the rest, however, was up to Pearsall.
With help from family members, she spent four days culling through the office's contents. The dining room was her staging area, but the stuff spilled over to the living room, she said.
Pearsall credits her husband with keeping her on track. She recalled pausing at one point to wonder aloud about the value of a couple of old dollar bills and who might be able to determine that. ''They're worth two dollars,'' he said, taking them from her and tossing them into a box.
Eventually she managed to purge 17 pounds of paper as well as other things she no longer needed. Items she uses infrequently were moved to the basement. The rest went back to the office, this time with carefully thought out destinations.
One of Pearsall's primary goals was to separate the paperwork associated with the two parts of her business, writing and leading workshops. So areas of her files are assigned for specific purposes — for example, business papers, current projects, future ideas and teaching materials.
Existing bookshelves are similarly zoned. Research materials for each of her books are shelved together, and writing resources have their own section. One shelf houses four binders to hold reviews, one for each of her books — Trouble Don't Last, Crooked River, All of the Above and All Shook Up.
The closet now stores her workshop equipment, neatly stashed in carrying bags. Office supplies are collected in one cupboard in the hutch above her desk.
Pearsall pared her personal items, too. She hung a bulletin board to post samples of the notes and pictures she gets from children, with a promise to herself to change them each month. And she reduced the mementos on display to the 10 with the most meaning — among them, a piece of three-dimensional art created by a student, a cross-stitched version of a poem from her first book and a framed note her grandfather wrote in her autograph book when she was 14: ''To my granddaughter, who some day will be a known author.''
The room got some cosmetic changes, as well. The mossy green walls and beige shag rug still worked, but heavy wood shutters were removed and replaced with pleated blinds and curtains for a homier look. Pearsall wanted the room to have some whimsy, so a pillow with a kicky embroidered design decorates a black armchair in one corner, and artwork on the walls includes signs that say ''Imagine'' and ''And They Lived Happily Ever After.''
Already she's gotten the ultimate compliment: Her 9-year-old stepson, Ethan Rosser, walked into the office earlier this week and said, ''Can I work in here?''
The office isn't quite finished. Pearsall still has some organizing to do, and she needs to figure out a way to resolve the problem of furniture that doesn't match the color of the bookshelves and woodwork. But even incomplete, it's a place she likes to be.
She's even decided to incorporate the reorganization into the Extreme Writing Makeover workshops she presents to kids.
After all, making over an office is a lot like rewriting a story: It involves getting rid of unneeded stuff, putting things in better order and streamlining everything.
And the result is always an improvement.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com.
SILVER LAKE: As a children's author, Shelley Pearsall is accustomed to organizing her thoughts.
Papers, books and supplies, however, were another matter.
Pearsall's home office had become awash in disorganization — so much so that it was chosen the best of the worst in the recent My Ugly Home Office Contest, sponsored by the Cleveland-based Council of Smaller Enterprises' Home Business Network. Pearsall's entry was picked from more than 70 to win $3,000 worth of office furniture from Today's Business Products in Cleveland, as well as a one-year membership to COSE.
The office makeover is mostly complete, and already Pearsall is enjoying the results. So is her husband and assistant, Mike Winter, who described the old office as ''kind of scary'' and recalled having to tiptoe around piles on the floor just to get envelopes out of a cupboard.
Working in the office wasn't a joy for Pearsall, either. The room was dreary and poorly lighted, the file cabinets were crammed, and the disordered heaps of papers made finding things time-consuming.
Her work surface consisted of two tables, one of which had a broken computer keyboard drawer that would fall on her when she'd try to type. Things would tumble out of the closet when she'd open the door. And if she needed items for one of the writing workshops she presents at schools, she had to empty the closet, retrieve what she needed and then put everything away again.
''It really distracted me,'' she said. ''[The mess] may have reflected my creativity, but it didn't help it very much.''
Pearsall's problem stemmed from a combination of factors: inadequate furniture, insufficient storage and the lack of a system for dealing with the many documents and reference materials associated with her work.
Today's Business Products was able to help with the first two issues. One of its designers developed a floor plan and helped Pearsall choose furniture that would suit her needs, said John Quinones, the company's vice president.
He said that was a challenge, given the room's fairly small dimensions — not quite 10 by 12 feet. But they decided on an L-shaped desk with file drawers and an overhead storage hutch, along with a lateral file cabinet that provided storage space for documents, a work surface on top and a place to put a lamp.
Organizing the rest, however, was up to Pearsall.
With help from family members, she spent four days culling through the office's contents. The dining room was her staging area, but the stuff spilled over to the living room, she said.
Pearsall credits her husband with keeping her on track. She recalled pausing at one point to wonder aloud about the value of a couple of old dollar bills and who might be able to determine that. ''They're worth two dollars,'' he said, taking them from her and tossing them into a box.
Eventually she managed to purge 17 pounds of paper as well as other things she no longer needed. Items she uses infrequently were moved to the basement. The rest went back to the office, this time with carefully thought out destinations.
One of Pearsall's primary goals was to separate the paperwork associated with the two parts of her business, writing and leading workshops. So areas of her files are assigned for specific purposes — for example, business papers, current projects, future ideas and teaching materials.
Existing bookshelves are similarly zoned. Research materials for each of her books are shelved together, and writing resources have their own section. One shelf houses four binders to hold reviews, one for each of her books — Trouble Don't Last, Crooked River, All of the Above and All Shook Up.
The closet now stores her workshop equipment, neatly stashed in carrying bags. Office supplies are collected in one cupboard in the hutch above her desk.
Pearsall pared her personal items, too. She hung a bulletin board to post samples of the notes and pictures she gets from children, with a promise to herself to change them each month. And she reduced the mementos on display to the 10 with the most meaning — among them, a piece of three-dimensional art created by a student, a cross-stitched version of a poem from her first book and a framed note her grandfather wrote in her autograph book when she was 14: ''To my granddaughter, who some day will be a known author.''
The room got some cosmetic changes, as well. The mossy green walls and beige shag rug still worked, but heavy wood shutters were removed and replaced with pleated blinds and curtains for a homier look. Pearsall wanted the room to have some whimsy, so a pillow with a kicky embroidered design decorates a black armchair in one corner, and artwork on the walls includes signs that say ''Imagine'' and ''And They Lived Happily Ever After.''
Already she's gotten the ultimate compliment: Her 9-year-old stepson, Ethan Rosser, walked into the office earlier this week and said, ''Can I work in here?''
The office isn't quite finished. Pearsall still has some organizing to do, and she needs to figure out a way to resolve the problem of furniture that doesn't match the color of the bookshelves and woodwork. But even incomplete, it's a place she likes to be.
She's even decided to incorporate the reorganization into the Extreme Writing Makeover workshops she presents to kids.
After all, making over an office is a lot like rewriting a story: It involves getting rid of unneeded stuff, putting things in better order and streamlining everything.
And the result is always an improvement.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com.
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