Control vs creativity: how Studio Huske started

The paradox · The wishlist · The labour · The impact

Something that has become increasingly clear to me as a parent is that two opposing things can be true at the same time. You can need structure and crave creativity. You can want control and want to let go. This is the story of how that contradiction became a product.

Control vs creativity

Image: Judee Schliefer, Three Little Lions

As an expat living in Switzerland with two small children in the middle of a global pandemic, it did not take much for me to experience chronic overwhelm. The sense that the daily tasks would never end. That I had to get some kind of control over a mounting, never-decreasing load.

On the one hand, I felt like control was important. But there is a whole other part of my personality that wants to give my children a creative space to find their own interests, to be independent and free-thinking. And most importantly, independent of me.

I simultaneously believed that we should have structure, routine, everything in its place. And that our systems should not be this difficult, this repetitive, this full of drudge. I wanted order, but I also wanted the house to be creative and full of open-ended expression. Both were true.

The universal wishlist

I am easily overwhelmed, and I need systems. I am also highly analytical and very much a systems thinker. So I did what came naturally. I analysed every kids' product in my home and made a universal wishlist of what was missing.

They generate and revel in mess. Sensorially they love it. They are in full flow when exploring, investigating, chewing, stroking, pulling, grabbing at their toys and play mats. That playfulness worked well for them, and for me, but it generated a lot of work.

Around the same time, my youngest was starting baby-led weaning. Which, although highly beneficial, can be loosely translated to parent-led cleaning. We do not have a dog. I was on my knees picking things up off the floor and I thought: there has to be a better way.

The emotional labour

I was also tired of buying new products at every age and stage. Tired of throwing myself into hours of research, reading reviews endlessly, only to find that even the best products were relevant to my children for a short time. Then they were either relegated to storage for the gap between my oldest and youngest, or to the basement until I could find a fictional window of time to photograph them, put them up online, and claw back some of the investment.

That second option, the selling option, never really materialised. I ended up giving away a lot of products for free, which I am glad about. But the emotional labour of it is real.

So that is the backstory. I got to researching, and what started as a personal wishlist turned into a product range. I still work part-time as an architect. I have two children. I am still very much an expat with an exclusively paid village. Now I run this brand on the side.

What made it worth it

Studio Huske is what gets me up in the morning, besides my family. It is a huge creative outlet. And most of all, it is somewhere I can see that I have been impactful.

Nothing gives me greater pleasure than hearing how the mats have helped my customers in their daily lives. That is the thing that makes all the juggling worth it.

The overwhelm has only increased over time. I have taken on more balls to juggle. But I have never been more glad of the mats. They will always be either the most expensive prototype ever made for my own personal use, or a successful product range that has spread worldwide. Both descriptions are accurate, depending on the day.

If you recognise any of this, the tension between wanting structure and wanting freedom, the fatigue of products that do not last, the search for something that just works quietly in the background of family life, then you understand why this brand exists.

Kate