
Mother Stories
Erin Boyle Of Reading My Tea Leaves On Motherhood & Minimalism
Written by Katie Hintz-Zambrano
Photography by Photographed by Maria Del Rio
Nov 15, 2016
For those looking to marry minimalism and motherhood, look no further than Erin Boyle as a shining example. The whip-smart mama behind the blog Reading My Tea Leaves, Boyle is all about less is more parenting and living, and somehow manages to pare down her life to just the most beautiful essentials. Here, the writer and author invites us into the sparse 500-square-foot Brooklyn home she shares with her husband and 2-year-old daughter Faye, as they make room for baby #2.
- "We live in a one-bedroom apartment at the top of an old brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. When I’m feeling dramatic, I like to say we live in the garret (technically true). We moved into this apartment when I was 6 months pregnant with our daughter Faye. Our apartment before this one had a footprint of just 173-square-feet. We slept in a tiny sleeping loft that was only reachable by ladder and that we couldn’t stand up in, so moving into a space that’s almost 500-square-feet felt like we’d upgraded to a palace." Erin wears a Misha + Puff sweater and Storq dress. Faye wears a Misha + Puff sweater and Mabo pants.
- "I feel most comfortable surrounded by things that have a story, so my house is filled with vintage furniture that’s meaningful to me personally. But I also feel most at peace in an environment that’s notably not overfilled. I feel best with a lot of blank space and so I like to leave walls and floors and other surfaces relatively bare to allow for breathing room (and spontaneity!)."
- "I think the best decorating comes from your gut. What makes you feel good? What makes you feel comfortable? What makes sense in the space that you have? But more than anything, my philosophy is to move slowly. Especially in a moment where social media can make it can feel like our houses are always on display, there’s pressure to have a space be finished. Screw it! Spaces are mutable. They’re always changing, whether to accommodate a new need or a new interest! I think fighting the urge to make lots of quick decisions results in homes that feel good to be in and that are filled with items that have been thoughtfully gathered."
- "I grew up in a super old house on the Connecticut shoreline. When my family moved into the house when I was 7, there were two vintage headboards in the attic that had been put up there when there was a staircase and that got stuck up there when the staircase came out and a drop stair was added instead. When I was in college, my parents rebuilt a staircase and so the headboards could finally come down. They left one up there for a guest bed and I took the other one. James and I drove it down to North Carolina strapped to the roof of our car and it’s been with us ever since (minus the hiatus when we slept in that tiny loft and we had to stash it back at my parents’ house). Artwise, I’d love to bring in a few more colorful pieces when I find the right ones, but one of my favorite things in our apartment is an etching by Stow Wengenroth of Cape Cod sand dunes. It was a gift from my cousin when we got married. Wengenroth was a Brooklyn-born artist who spent a lot of time drawing the New England coast and I feel like we have a little bit of shared history."
- "I think kids being comfortable at home is super important. We don’t really own anything for Faye that we don’t like to look at, so at first glance our apartment doesn’t look super kid-centric, but we have little spaces throughout the apartment that she can claim as her own. Aesthetically they blend into the rest of the space, but they’re carved out in a way that makes them comfy and accessible for a tiny person. I’m naturally a pretty tidy (okay, very tidy) person and I feel like kids also really thrive in spaces that are spare and simple, so I feel extra motivated to cultivate that atmosphere in our home. Also, given half a chance, toddlers are master organizers in disguise."
- "I’m sure the baby will sleep out in the main room with us at the beginning—we’ll use the same moses basket that we used for Faye when she was tiny—but we’ll eventually have both kiddos in the same room. We moved Faye to a twin bed over the summer and left the crib in the room so that she would have lots of time to prepare for her crib getting used by a new sibling! We just raised the mattress and put the side back on the other day and things are starting to feel very real.”
- "I think I’ve been a little gentler with myself this go-round. I still work really hard, but I’ve been better about taking little pauses and breaks when I’m feeling especially exhausted (or cranky!) than I was the first time around. If I’m being totally honest, the hardest thing has been climbing the stairs up to our apartment not only while pregnant, but also while carrying a two-year-old. (Quads of steel!)" Erin wears a Storq caftan.
- "We don’t know! We didn’t find out with Faye either and for me it’s just about the best surprise there is. I know that people decide to find out their baby’s sex for all sorts of reasons, but for me, I have a hard time finding a reason that doesn’t have to do with fitting a kid into a box before they’ve even made their way into the world. Waiting to find out feels like a teeny tiny act of rebellion and a way to stave off the cultural gender expectations for at least a few months longer..."
- "If we’re talking straight-up how to approach birth itself, I’d say shut out the noise and listen to stories. I realize these things sound contradictory, but there is just so much advice given to pregnant women and I think it’s really important to seek out advice from women you admire and to ignore everything else. For so many women in this country, our experience of childbirth before actually giving birth ourselves is super limited. We just don’t have very much direct experience with what childbirth looks like—and certainly not what it feels like—and that can be scary. I found tremendous comfort in gathering stories about birth from women who I loved. When I was still pregnant with Faye, I met my mom and dad for cupcakes in SoHo. They told me the story of my birth and my sisters’ births (my mom and dad practiced the partner-coached childbirth method that James and I did) and I left feeling so much more ready. Faye was born just a few days later!" Erin wears rings by Another Feather, Rebecca Mir Grady, Grace Lee, and Satomi Kawakita. Her bronze cuff—a gift from her mom—was made by an artist in Connecticut and is etched with notches that indicate her birth date.
- "I’m one of four kids and so I grew up imagining that I’d have a big brood, but I’m not as convinced that that’s the only path for me as I once was. We’ll have to read the tea leaves on this one..."
- "My mom!"
- "This is just a small example, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about family dinners. Growing up we always ate together as a family, and while I’ll try not to be quite as tyrannical about table manners as my dad may or may not have been, I really cherish recreating that tradition in our family."
- "It's Faye Josephine Casey. Faye is a name that James and I both just really love (for me it’s partly because I am a huge nerd and the idea of being connected to the fairy world just kind of thrills me). Josephine was the middle name of one of my very favorite women. My great great aunt Ruth Josephine Cudmore grew up in Brooklyn, followed her brothers to medical school in 1920, and was a practicing pediatrician until she was by all measures an old woman. (She passed away a month shy of her 100th birthday when I was 16.) She was beyond gregarious, smart as a whip, blunt as anyone, and knew without question how to have a good time. Casey is my husband’s last name. We vacillated a bit about whether or not to hyphenate our last names for our kids. The jury’s still out on what our next baby’s first, middle, and last name will be!" Faye wears a Mabo dress and bloomers and Goat-Milk tights.
- "When I was writing my book, I was searching for evidence beyond my own hunches that creating simple spaces for children was a nice thing to try. I ended up really loving Kim John Payne’s Simplicity Parenting, which felt approachable and relatable (and, okay, yes, because it corroborated what I was already up to!)."
- "I’m incredibly excited about raising thoughtful, feminist, engaged children who care deeply and act courageously. Being able to model that behavior myself is a tremendous privilege and responsibility."
- "I guess what I’m nervous about is really also what I’m most excited about—that I’ll be able to be a strong role model for my kids without also being an overly imposing figure. I want to be able to teach them to be kind and thoughtful and loving and also independent and confident as hell."
- "Everything! I’m especially excited for the relationship between Faye and a sibling, though. My sisters are some of my very favorite people in the world and I’m so excited to see how two kids in our family support each other."
- "On a totally practical level, the childcare side of things with two kids is very much on my mind lately. Affordability of care is a concern for most working parents and our family is definitely not an exception. That said, we made it work when Faye was born—and with nary a plan in sight when she came bursting into the world two weeks early—so that’s made me feel more confident that we can make it work again. "
- "I love raising a kid in a place where she’s exposed to a huge diversity of people and opinions and lifestyles. I think that it’s clear that many Americans right now are really suffering from insularity and for me right now, one way of combatting that is to live in a place filled with people who look and act and think differently than our family."
- "Sure! We think about where we might head next all the time, we’re just not sure where we might make a move (or when!). This summer we sublet our apartment and spent six weeks in rural France as a family. It was so incredibly lovely, but where I thought it might convince me that I wanted to spend more time in the country and less time in the city, it kind of did the opposite. Whoops! More tea leaf reading to be done here, too..."
- "The three of us slept in this room until Faye was 18 months old, when my husband and I moved our bed into the main room of our apartment, studio-style, and left this small, narrow room just for Faye. It was the best decision we ever made in terms of our sleep (though, lord knows, don’t ask me to wax expert on getting a kid to sleep). Like everywhere else in our apartment, I like to keep the space spare, in part so that it’s easy to change as our needs change. I especially love bringing in little bits of nature to correspond to the changing seasons."
- "Right now Faye’s pretty into her basket of play silks—my mom made them and they belonged to me and my sisters when we were little (it’s a theme!). Faye calls them her jackets and uses them for just about anything you can think of—building forts, dressing her baby doll, throwing over her shoulder, getting snuggly with..."
- "Faye’s dresser is a changing table that my parents bought when my mom was pregnant with my older sister. Truth be told, I’m not actually really crazy about its design, but I’m still sentimental about the fact that it was used for me and each of my sisters as well as my nephew before Faye (and practical enough that I didn’t say no to a free changing table). Nothing helped me power through a tough diaper change like the knowledge that I was not, indeed, the first person to get a tiny bum into a tiny diaper in that space. My very favorite thing in Faye’s room is probably the two driftwood mobiles that I made from pieces my mom found on the beach in my hometown. They’re ridiculously simple, but they give a little bit of magic to the space and I love that I can switch out the details on them according to the seasons. Right now we’re gearing up to get all winter solstice-y around here and I can’t wait to bring in some festive pine clippings to cozy up the place." Erin wears a vintage maternity dress that her mother wore while pregnant with her and her sisters in the '80s.
- "I write the blog Reading My Tea Leaves. It’s a lifestyle blog, so I write a lot about what’s happening in my life right this minute, but I always try to weave in conversations about sustainability and simplicity. My first book came out earlier this year. It’s called Simple Matters and it embraces the notion that living simply and purposefully is more sustainable not only for the environment, but also for our own happiness and well-being."
- "Boredom? I was working in a job that I didn’t love and I had just applied to graduate programs and was waiting to hear back from them, so everything felt a little bit up in the air (hence the metaphorical tea leaf reading)."
- "I’ll start by admitting that I have a complicated relationship with the world minimalist. I worry that like a lot of buzzy words that find their way into the lexicon that it can be a little reductionist or at least bland. I don’t think there’s a magic number of items we should own or even that there’s necessarily a morality attached to owning fewer things. I do think that we live in a moment of excess and that pausing to think about the impact of our consumer habits can be a moral and an ethical act. And I also think that for a lot of people, a lot of stuff can feel legitimately stifling. One of the most energizing parts of my work is parsing through what that means, exploring alternative modes of consumption, and offering resources for readers looking to make a change or shift a habit."
- "I grew up and went to high school in southern Connecticut. I got my undergraduate degree at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where I studied history—women’s and U.S. history mostly. Then things get a little more circuitous: After college I moved to France where I taught English in elementary schools. When I returned to the U.S., I was still really interested in working for the kind of cultural organizations I’d worked for in college and so after working in North Carolina for a few years while James was in graduate school, I decided to go back to school myself and I got a master’s degree from Brown University in public humanities. We moved from Rhode Island to New York in 2011 and ultimately, the storytelling and oral history work that I did in graduate school turned itself into writing more and more online, which led me to focus more seriously on my blog and to take a full-time editorial position working for another site."
- "I don’t think my view of work has really changed—I just probably do more of it!"
- "I definitely realized shortly after having Faye—while I was still on maternity leave—that I would need to be a lot more entrepreneurial if I was going to make the career I saw for myself and the parenthood that I saw for myself work symbiotically. There was no way I could have stayed working in the position that I was in when Faye was born and also be able to either afford adequate childcare or to spend enough time with my kid, and so that really lit a fire under me to shift things around and start working for myself."
- "My first impulse here is just nervous laughter, but the truth is that I’m really hoping that I can take a few quiet weeks after the baby is born to just be. Lots of cultures have a tradition of new mothers taking forty days to rest and recuperate after giving birth and I’m very into borrowing from that tradition—at least for awhile. One of the most striking things to me about my birth with Faye—an experience that was by all counts wonderful and smooth and healthy—was my own recovery afterward. I was so caught off guard by how much I would need to rest and heal and adjust physically to being a mother, let alone emotionally! No doubt this is different for everyone and different for every birth, but this time around I do feel like I’ll be better equipped to anticipate that things might be a little slow moving for a while and to honor that slowness."
- "Valuing my own work and what I have to offer to the world has probably been the most important thing. There’s a lot of talk about self-sacrifice and parenthood—and self-sacrifice and motherhood even more so—and while it’s true that parenting requires an enormous about of sacrifice, I don’t subscribe to the idea that it needs to mean a dissolution of a former self in the name of service to the children in our care. Ask me if I would do anything for my kid and the answer would be yes, absolutely, but I also think that part of being the best parent I can be is about being a whole and happy person myself, and for me that includes having a thriving career."
- "I kind of think that the idea of mom guilt is bullshit. This isn’t to say that I don’t sometimes feel crappy about something related to parenting, but the concept of mom guilt feels so much like internalized misogyny and on an even more basic level, it just feels unhelpful. Sometimes parents mess up; that’s okay! Kids who are loved unconditionally will thrive; everything else is relatively inconsequential by comparison."
- "We’re working on it! We’ve actually had a number of friends move away from the city recently and when my older sister moved to Portland last year we definitely went into a period of mourning. We had spent so much time with her and her family and losing them to the West Coast was a big change for us. Until I fulfill my dream of living on a compound with my sisters, I’m trying to get better about creating a village where I am."
- "I love that I get to be creative and that I get to dictate the projects that I take on, the people who I work with, and the subjects that I tackle."
- "For me, the decision to be a parent was so much about doing it with someone else. I’m excited about the project of raising kids with someone who I love and that makes balancing our relationship and our parenting so much more manageable, especially in inevitably difficult moments. But also: Dates. It’s really nice to carve out time when it’s just the two of us."
- "Dun, dun, dun...More of the same? Less of the same? Right now I feel more galvanized than ever to work on behalf of women, to champion the environment, and to lend my voice to folks who have been marginalized. I feel so grateful to have a platform and I’m so excited to think about new ways to work harder and smarter and more compassionately. I just might need an assistant..."
- "Easy? That’s the goal anyway. I like to look nice, but I’m not really a clotheshorse. I could definitely live in a t-shirt and jeans most days, but I also really appreciate an easy dress. Also: Clogs."
- "During my pregnancy I have leaned heavily on Storq basics. (Full disclosure: Storq is a sponsor of my site and Courtney and Grace are friends of mine, but those things aside, I am eternally grateful for the company’s comfortable, hard-working clothes for pregnant people!) Mostly though, I think a staple is mostly something that you’ll wear over and over and over again and feel great in it every single time. The trick is just finding that thing."
- "One of the my favorite things about my job is the relationship that I’ve developed with small designers and business owners, both who support the site through advertising and whose work I’ve found through researching ethical brands. If you seek them out, there are so many companies making considered, intentional clothes. I really admire brands that are doing serious hard work in terms of designing clothes that feel good to wear and that also have a thoughtful supply chain. It’s not always an easy road for small businesses, which makes me all the more impressed by the efforts."
- "I’m really not a huge shopper. But I definitely do a fair amount of online window-shopping, and have found that being able to 'try things on for size' via a Pinterest board has been illuminating in terms of pinpointing what I like and what I’m drawn to from a purely aesthetic perspective."
- "I have a pretty simple routine, but I do really like the ritual of beautifying, so to speak. I almost always have a face toner/hydrosol of some kind (spritzing my face just feels so good and so fancy!). I usually exfoliate with cleansing grains once a week or so and I’ve been using face oils for the past four or five years and really love them."
- "Do baths count as wellness? If yes, I’m a wellness champion! In all seriousness, my wellness routine is kind of a moving target. I really try to take frequent walks (and not just the kind that are getting me somewhere I need to be), but I often end up sacrificing my exercise routine in order to squeeze in extra work (or kiddo snuggles). A work in progress..." For more on Erin and her family, check out her site here and Instagram feed here.
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