Our studio is going on a road trip!
The Soap Shed Is Moving (Yes, the Whole Thing)
I'd love to tell you that preparing to move my studio has been a graceful, meditative process. I'd love to tell you I've been wrapping beeswax in linen and humming softly to myself.
I have not.
I'm writing this from the middle of a room that is roughly 40% boxes, 40% soap molds, and 20% questions I don't have answers to yet. There is a tape gun on the floor that I have stepped on twice. And somewhere between the second box of stainless pots and the third "wait, where did the scale go," I started seriously questioning my life choices. 😁
The short version
We're downsizing. After years on a 43-acre homestead, we've realized we simply don't need that much land anymore. We're trading it for a charming Cape Cod style farmhouse on 5 acres, with a view of Whiteface Mountain that stops me mid-sentence every time I picture it out the window.
Forty-three acres down to five. It's the right decision. It's also a lot of life to move 35 miles down the road.
And here's the part that still makes me grin: the studio is coming with us. All of it. Walls, roof, and floor.
Meet the soap shed
In 2020, I had a 14x28 foot Adirondack cabin built for me. We call it "the studio," or, more often and with more love, the soap shed. It's where every bar, every body butter, every candle and pillow spray I've sold has come to life. It's where I've poured at dawn, cut bars with cold coffee at my elbow, and written more handwritten notes than I could ever count.
So when we decided to move, there was no real question. I wasn't going to leave it behind. The company that built it will be picking up the entire structure and carrying it to our new home. A whole cabin, rolling down the road. If you happen to see it, please wave.
(I will absolutely be following it in the car, probably crying a little, definitely taking photos.)
Nobody warns you about the and
Here's the thing about running a small business: it doesn't pause politely when your life does. Orders still come in. Someone in another state still wants a bar of chaga soap, and honestly, I love that for them. They don't know my labels are in a box. They don't know the scale is in a box marked "KITCHEN?" in my own handwriting, and that "kitchen" is a lie.
So I'm living in two timelines at once. In one, I'm a soap maker pouring, cutting, wrapping, and tucking notes into boxes. In the other, I'm someone slowly emptying a building that is about to travel.
The date that doesn't exist yet
Of course, I can't tell you when this is all happening, because I don't know. We're waiting on a closing date, and until that's finalized, everything is in a kind of suspended animation. I've packed what I can. I've made what I can. I've stared at the calendar a lot.
If you've ever tried to plan around a date that's still undecided, you know the particular flavor of this. Do I make extra inventory now? Do I leave the equipment up a little longer? Do I pack the curing racks or pour one more batch? Every answer is "it depends," and what it depends on is a phone call I haven't gotten yet.
Soap, as it happens, is also on its own timeline. It cures when it cures. It does not care about closing dates. My whole philosophy is slow beauty, and life has once again looked at that philosophy and said, cool, but also, hurry up and wait.
The part where I do the math at 11 p.m.
Every small business owner knows this ritual. You lie there and calculate. How many batches before the move? How many after? What happens to the shelves at the market if I run low? What happens to wholesale orders if the studio is, technically, on a truck?
I've made lists. I've made lists about my lists. A to-do list that includes both "pour lavender batch" and "figure out what happens to my workspace when I don't know what day it is" is a to-do list that will make you stare at a wall.
The birch, though
One thing has made this feel less like losing something and more like beginning something. Right next to the spot where the studio will sit at the new place, there's a small grove of birch trees.
Every late winter and early spring, I tap birch for sap. It's one of my favorite rituals of the whole year, and it's one of the ingredients that makes Solitude what it is. The thought of stepping out of the soap shed and walking a few feet to the trees that will become part of the next batch? I got a little emotional about it. Okay, a lot.
Some things will change. The land will be smaller. The view will be different. But the heart of it, a small cabin, a few trees, and a lot of slow work, is making the trip.
Small wins, because I need them
• I found a lid I'd been missing for what felt like two years. It was exactly where it should have been, which is somehow more annoying.
• I packed an entire shelf without stopping once to rearrange it. Growth.
• Orders are still going out with a handwritten note in every box, even when the pen is the only thing I can find.
What I'm holding onto
This move is a personal one. It's about the life we want, not just the business we run, and the two have always been tangled together here. That's what happens when you build something by hand: the place and the person and the product all get a little mixed up.
I don't know exactly how it will feel when it's done. Probably a little sad, a little relieved, and very tired. But there's a farmhouse waiting with a mountain in the window, a cabin about to take the longest road trip of its life, and a grove of birch trees that don't know yet how much work they have ahead of them.
So if you've ever tried to do two huge things at once and wondered if you'd lost your mind, I see you. Pass me the tape gun. I'll try not to step on it again.
More soon, from somewhere between the old studio and the new one.
— Jenn