M A S S A C H U S E T T S

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New England Original

The Salem Cross Inn and the flavor for fall

Larger Than LifeArtists honor W.E.B. Du Bois

Make Room For GuestsSmall-home design for hospitality

MASSACHUSETTS

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5 This Month, All Over Things to do in November, including our Fab Four

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12 Larger Than Life Artists honor the legacy of scholar and activist W.E.B. Du Bois. By Laura Holland

y o u r a r t h e r e

17 We Walk In Chaos, Bound, Searching For The Light, and more By Ruth Kjaer

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19 It’s Never Too Early for The Messiah Berkshire Bach hosts a Thanksgiving season sing-in. By Jason Victor Serinus

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22 Make Room For Guests ...even if your home doen’t have a guest room. By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser

ON THE COVER: A GUEST ROOM FOR THE AGESPHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL SHOUL

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...even if your house doesn’t have a guest room.

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I really didn’t want a guest room,” Sally Staub declares. “Even if you have guests pretty fre-quently, it’s like handing over a room not to be used all that often.”

Like many people these days, Staub requires the rooms in her family’s house to multitask. She and husband Adrian, a UMass psychology professor, brought three daughters together when they married, and await the imminent arrival of a baby boy.

A former deputy photo editor at Family Fun magazine, Staub recently launched an interior design business, which she plans to conduct from their Northampton home. Her husband routinely brings work home, so home office space for the two adults took two rooms of the house. Each girl has a bedroom. A sleeping porch right off the parents’ bedroom will morph into a nursery. While their

BY SARAH WERTHAN BUTTENWIESER | PHOTOGRAPHY BY PAUL SHOUL

Sally Staub working at her kitchen counter

Make Room for Guests“

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family of five and soon-to-be-six fits in the house, there isn’t a spare room left to serve as a dedicated guest room.

Yet the Staub family does not lack for guests. Rather than a spe-cial room, visitors receive a tray with books and water. Sally makes sure clean towels are waiting—and whatever else they might request. “I did live in one house that had a stand-alone guest room. I thought it wasn’t all that practical,” Staub says. Instead, she decid-ed to come up with ways to make overnight guests feel welcome in her bustling household without a separate guest room.

A few specific ideas—coupled with some principles that have guided the aesthetic of the entire house—accomplish this. The first idea is one she had to lobby for because it was a little unconvention-al; rather than give the girls (all in elementary school) twin beds, their bedrooms have full-sized mattresses. For the girls to double up in one of their bedrooms is easy that way. At the same time, the freed-up bed is big enough to accommodate two guests.

Given the flexibility all those full-sized beds allow, it’s possible to host entire families—and not put anyone on the floor. “On occa-sion, when we have a couple of parents and a couple of kids stay at our house, we’ve had two girls give up their bedrooms,” Staub says. “They can fit on the full-sized sleeper sofa on the sleeping porch, which, like their beds, is big enough for two to share. Our sleeper

sofa is really comfortable.” That sleeping porch couldn’t become a guest room because

the only way to reach it is through the bedroom Staub and her husband share. She concedes that the sleeper sofa on that porch-turned-room isn’t a lasting solution when it comes to overnight visitors. That room will be the baby’s nursery next. “For the first few months, we can always move the cradle into our room and the girls can sleep on the porch,” she says. “After that…”

Staub doesn’t think anyone should rule out the idea of a sleeper sofa. “I helped a client find a nice one for her office,” she says. “Her office doubles as the guest room now. These days there are plenty of very good sleeper sofas. You don’t sacrifice a night of sleep, or your back. You don’t have to feel like you’re a college student if you

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“WHEN YOUR SPACE IS CLEAN AND MINIMALIST AND EFFICIENT, THE GUEST WON’T FEEL

CRAMMED INTO IT.” −SALLY STAUB

Hospitality sweet!

own one. There are handsome, grown-up versions of sleeper sofas. What you have to do is open your mind to the idea that this is a piece of furniture which has evolved from the student version of sleeper sofa—a futon on a frame.”

The other big idea to ensure that space turned over to guests feels welcoming has to do with clutter. “I am a minimalist,” Staub admits. “I don’t like to have a lot of stuff. I don’t like clutter. Obviously we’re a large family, soon to be larger, and we have lots of stuff. But because I need my space not to be cluttered, I’m good at purging. I don’t let things accumulate.” She adds, “Donate. Sell. Give stuff away.” The principle when it comes to guests is very simple: “When your space is clean and minimalist and efficient, the guest won’t feel crammed into it.”

Some things must stay in the house, though, and Staub has given a great deal of thought to ways she can put systems in place that accommodate the flow of stuff. “I like everything to have a place,” she says. “I’m big on shelves with bins.” Out-of-season clothing gets stored under the family’s beds. “Our stor-age containers are fabric; the kids’ are plastic with lids. There are really nice-looking ones available from the Container Store,” she says. “It’s great when you’ve switched the clothing and the

Staub style

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weather changes, because it’s easy to grab an extra pair of shorts or a sweatshirt.”

In three bedrooms, Staub has set trunks at the feet of the beds. She takes care not to overstuff them. “Our trunk has bed linens and extra blankets,” she says. “The girls’ trunks have costumes, dress-up stuff.” Because there’s some room available in the trunks, they can move the contents around. If a guest were to stay for more than a couple of nights and needed a place for clothing, Staub would be able to move the costumes in order to free up that space for the guest’s use.

She has another idea for guests that prefer to hang clothing. “In my last house, I didn’t have much closet space, so I used a storage rack on wheels as a small second clothes closet,” she says. “It would be easy to put a storage rack out for a guest’s use. Those closets fold easily and could be stored under a bed.”

In the house proper, a large dining table that seats twelve becomes the primary location for meals when there are guests in the house. On its own, the family usually eats in the kitchen, where the table seats six. To have an ample space where visiting can occur is helpful, Staub asserts, because it sets a welcoming tone and the time spent together is more comfortable, more emotionally expansive, than when everyone is crammed in. This philosophy is in keeping with the minimalist sensibility she brings to home décor. P

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