An ode to Erin
After we moved into our home, Erin’s philosophy on incremental home improvement and upkeep started to make sense. She has very slowly and steadily kinsugi-ed every apartment she lived in and made every place better without tearing it apart + creating a whole lot of waste. Her way of making a home is what slow decor has come to represent for me. Her tiny improvements are the antidote to all the fast decor/fast renovations/house-flippings I crave after seeing them on the internet/among my peers. She works on her home, by herself. Waits to find things she needs on the stoops/second hand markets of NYC. All very poetic and deliciously slow ! With her current apartment, she let it be for the first year after move in. Slowly, the work started. To sit in on less-than-perfect dwelling for any period of time, requires the wabi-sabi mindset and a tolerance to imperfection. I need to learn that mindset. For every influencer who shows me how to rip out everything old and buy wabi-sabi-aesthetic-esque-items to replace it with, I need an Erin to influence me to pause, not upgrade and live-small unapologetically. The way we live can be the way of the climate artist, with art going miles deeper than what can be seen on the surface. Thank you for the lesson !
If you’ve been on the internet in the past six months and have even a vague interest in home improvement—or the algorithm thinks you might—you’ve probably been subjected to a video that pairs the soaring, poppy “ah ha-ha-has” of AJR’s song The Good Part with a before-and-after video of someone’s home improvement project. At this stage I’ve probably seen a thousand of them. With the press of a palm, a smelly (I’m guessing) old garage is turned into a studio replete with built-in custom cabinetry and brass hardware. Brick fireplaces get repointed and plastered and hung with abstract art, windows get replaced wholesale, decrepit kitchens become streamlined visions of efficiency with nary a formica countertop in sight. The videos are addicting and with reason, skipping to the good part of any project, no matter how big or small, is something I’d like to do on the regular and there’s nothing wrong with indulging in a bit of warp-speed project completion eye candy.
But here’s my semi-regular reminder that the good part isn’t always a dramatic reveal. (And off-screen, sometimes the dramatic reveal is not so good at all.) The vast majority of my work happens slowly, with a brush-in-hand and a butt-in-chair that’s at odds with the algorithm’s thirst for drama. The expectations we have of online content creators, and by extension ourselves, don’t give us room to celebrate the little wins, the small improvements, the comfort that one tiny change can bring. Progress doesn’t have to happen all at once, indeed, it never does.
So, at the risk of repeating myself, on this mercifully sunshine-y February day, I’m writing from my newly arranged home office with trim freshly painted in a different shade of white and the desk moved 18-inches to the East. From the other side of the screen, you might not catch the differences at all, but inside these four walls, they’re as clear as day. I’m already feeling like I’m at the good part. A good part, anyway, one of many, in a work in progress.
Erin Boyle, Can we skip to the good part.
The famous Dieter Rams quote, and title of his 1995 book, “Less, but better,” gets used a lot in minimalist circles. (Full disclosure, I used it myself in my book.) Like so many pithy quotes, it’s often taken out of context, or construed to mean something different than originally intended. A designer, Rams was no doubt referring to his own pared down design aesthetic, but also referencing the impact of that design and the notion that simpler design allows, in some measure at least, for simpler lives. In recent interpretations, I often see the phrase used as a kind of consumer mantra—a guiding principle for how one might shop. Choosing the one hand-hewn stool, for instance, instead of three mass-produced ones, is to choose less, but better.
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I’m currently writing a post about tea strainers, of all things, and my quest to replace my two insufficient and damaged strainers with something, well, better. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask for one strainer that will adequately do its job of keeping leaves from floating in my tea. And yet, of course, what’s so wrong with a few stray tea leaves?
I sometimes wonder how well these superlatives, and our quest for the best of something, end up serving us. What about the possibility of replacing better or best with good enough? The reality of my own day-to-day life is that living simply and keeping a pared down collection of well-loved items often isn’t about having the best. It’s about making the best of what I already have.
Erin Boyle, Less and good enough.
Reading My Tea Leaves is one of my fav blogs and continues to be a corner of sunshine on the internet. Her writing has the capability to enchant me out the consumer culture I live in. Her writing made me strongly believe that art is necessary to create the counter-culture that can compliment the required climate policies. Art came first to change my mind, IPCC reports came later. To see someone glee-fully living with less and imperfectly DIY-ing her way through life is good influence, in a world of perfectly-polished-stylized no-imprefection-tolerated tear-down-anything-old keep-upgrading-on-loop image-obsessed-world I somehow fell into, on social media. I heavily leaned on her for tiny house living and minimalist wardrobe building tips through the years. She became an archetype of ‘have a full life with a few beautiful things and be a good citizen who is politically engaged in a democracy’ that I want for myself. After reading the IPCC reports, I don’t think bloggers should equate sustainable living to bulk/vintage store shopping and send all of us women over-working ourselves in the kitchen. Yes, we should reduce single-use plastic and carry reusable. But it should not stop there. If I put in my time and energy into the movement, it has to be smartly utilized towards a goal, not just keep me busy doing mason jar approved housework and make me delirious in thinking that is the best place for my mind to be. Being in that initial wave of zero waste blogging had expending all my energy on tinkering with the 20 grams of CO2 emitting problems while turning a blind eye to the 2+ ton C02 emitting personal problems and 2 million ton emitting systemic problems. Listen to the climate scientists, innovators and the artists. Act on IPCC reports. That is the way out of the crisis.
Individuals with high socio-economic status have high behavioral plasticity and capability to reduce their GHG emissions, especially in mobility by flying less and utilizing electric two, three, or four wheelers, by becoming role models of low-carbon lifestyles, by investing into low-carbon business, and by lobbying for stringent climate policies ( high confidence).
Cultural change, in combination with new or adapted infrastructure, is necessary to enable and realise many Avoid and Shift options (medium confidence). By drawing support from diverse actors, narratives of change can enable coalitions to form, providing the basis for social movements to campaign in favour of (or against) societal transformations. People act and contribute to climate change mitigation in their diverse capacities as consumers, citizens, professionals, role models, investors, and policymakers.
Collective action as part of social or lifestyle movements underpins system change (high confidence). Collective action and social organising are crucial to shift the possibility space of public policy on climate change mitigation. For example, climate strikes have given voice to youth in more than 180 countries. In other instances, mitigation policies allow the active participation of all stakeholders, resulting in building social trust, new coalitions, legitimising change, and thus initiate a positive cycle in climate governance capacity and policies.
Transition pathways and changes in social norms often start with pilot experiments led by dedicated individuals and niche groups (high confidence). Collectively, such initiatives can find entry points to prompt policy, infrastructure, and policy reconfigurations, supporting the further uptake of technological and lifestyle innovations. Individual’s agency is central as social change agent and narrators of meaning. These bottom-up social-cultural forces catalyst a supportive policy environment, which enables changes.
Social influencers and though leaders can increase the adoption of low-carbon technologies, behaviors, and lifestyles ( high confidence ). Preferences are malleable and can align with a cultural shift. The modeling of such shifts by salient and respected community members can help bring about changes in different service provisioning systems. Between 10% and 30% committed individuals are required to set new social norms.
– IPCC. This is a guideline for sustainability bloggers. Read the ones who help. Detox the ones who greenwash. Support the ones who are trying to transition to low-carbon living and writing about it.
Make the house livable.
Have enough furniture so that we can sit and sleep.
Have Sufficient ambient lighting in every room.
That was my goal for year one. We achieved it. We have it good to do every activity we need. Let me pause for a while and do nothing. I have a deep desire to make my nest cozy and beautiful. But slowly and as sustainably as possible. Let me recover from all this buying and detox from the mindset tuned to acquisitions. Let me think, edit my lists and find em second hand. I need a long term strategy. I need to develop a long term strategy. I need to deeply think about lighting, focal points, texture, juxtaposition, anchor points, smells, sounds, walls, ambiance, art, … for every room. I need time to digest and edit the ideas I come up with. Taking a time out, will help. This maybe the most important step in the process so far. Let me take the time to appreciate what we have right now. It takes time to learn a space, know what it needs, to understand our use patterns, to find our sense of style, to develop the stamina to wait for the right thing, to gather the courage to be creative, to find the balance between minimalism and lived in, ….. Pause, to clear my head and slow down. Use the saved energy to garden. Gardening and decorating a home should have the same philosophy :
Make a mood board for the house. Sketch your garden plan.
Buy the most necessary furniture. Plant the trees first.
Slowly find the decor second hand. Plant some native plantings.
Upkeep what is owned. Water deeply and Compost.
The End.