We recently connected with Emily Enstad and have shared our conversation below.

Emily, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

Abbie and I had been good friends in high school together, and found ourselves in the same small town, years later, in the midst of growing our families during a global pandemic. Abbie and her husband welcomed their second daughter literally the day the world shut down in March 2020, and since I was also pregnant with a 2020 baby, we found ourselves getting together for hot cocoa on my porch, 6 ft apart, talking about all things motherhood, kids, mental health, and the interconnectedness of it all. We realized how passionate we were about opening up the conversation around family mental health and the need for tangible tools and resources for parents who were spending more time than ever with their kids, and as a collective society, were feeling more anxiety than ever before.

As a teacher and a therapist, we knew that many barriers existed to accessing mental health care, and many times it was only when the circumstances had evolved into crisis mode. We knew there was an immense need for preventive tools for families to use at home that was informed by social emotional learning, as well as an emphasis on self-compassion for the parent. Through our lens as parents in the trenches– we also knew that at the end of the day, one of the best tool for parents mental health was a much needed a break and breather while their child played independently.

What began as an online community creating space for support, self-compassion, and shared resources, has now evolved into a retail business where we create art and sensory play kits that teach early emotional literacy skills, and touches on all of the things we wanted to provide preventative family wellness: SEL, self-compassion, and opportunities for connected or independent play. Each kit includes either play dough or sensory sand, small thematic pieces for open-ended creative play, and a mini resource booklet on a social emotional learning skill topic (i.e. our Dinos Kit is all about Anger and things that may make you feel like roaring, and our Unicorns Kit is all about the topic of Self-Worth and learning to love what makes you unique).

Emily, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I ( Emily) am a registered art therapist (ATR) and licensed professional counselor (LPC) and a mom to 3 boys ages 5, 3.5, and 2. Abbie was an elementary special education teacher and is a mom to 2 girls ages 6 and 4. Between the two of us, we have always used art and play to connect with our professional clients and students, but it brought on a different meaning when we saw the power of play being used with our own kids and the opportunities it brought for meaningful connection and learning.

We launched our first sensory kits in 2021 and have been the first and only sensory kit company to directly teach social emotional learning through these types of creative play kits. We are also the only sensory kit company we have found that is created by a teacher and an art therapist.

We have created themed kits that explore topics of: self-worth, anger, routines, emotions, mindfulness, perseverance, growth mindset, authenticity, gratitude, community, perspective taking, and so many more! Each kit we make ties in an important lifeskill through the themed play which helps kids really learn the concepts.

We are also proud because as of just this past summer we launched our PREP Line– something we have been talking about since we started our business, and finally started. The PREP Line helps kids with life transitions and prepares them through play. We just launched 3 kits to start: The New Baby kit, The Moving Kit, and the Grief Kit.

We are proud to be able to support families and help raise the next generation of mindful, creative and resilient kids by equipping parents and educators with tools that they might not otherwise access without our company and it’s mission.

We are also pretty proud of our company’s overarching message of self-compassion, and to ‘be present not perfect’ in parenting and life in general!

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

Our Sensory Kits are somewhat of a combo of manufactured and sourced pieces– We make our play dough all in house (with our giant mixer we named ‘Biggie’) and we designed and had our unique double-sided jars manufactured.

When we first started, our sensory kits were made like most others you see today, in single jars with play dough and the small pieces all together. As we began to grow, we needed a faster and easier way to produce them and we had been dreaming up a design where the play dough could live in a separate compartment from the small pieces, while still keeping a easily contained and on-the-go feel for our customer.

It just so happened that my husband’s friend owned a plastics mould company. We met with him and told him our vision and he and his company were able to help us design a one-of-a-kind mould, with a divider in the middle and access for two twist on lids at either end. Thus solving both our pain points with not only scaling production of our products, but also enhancing our product for our customers. Once the mould was completed they helped us find a company to ‘shoot the plastic’ to make our one-of-a-kind jars.

One big thing we learned through this is that it takes time. We kept thinking we’d have the ‘new jar’ for countless launches and it just took longer than we thought as there were many test runs and revisions along the way. It was so worth the wait as it has set our company apart in a way we probably should talk about more and is just a surreal feeling that the our idea was able to come to fruition.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Working mostly during nap times and late nights, posting content during feedings, baby monitors out while we were shipping orders late into the night (To date I have not been out of the diaper phase since starting present not perfect!) and countless other times where we had to dig deep in this season of motherhood and entrepreneurship. As we juggle these multiple roles as moms and entrepreneurs, being resilient and navigating all the changes has never felt truer to us as in times of great growth and change both for us personally and professionally. Figuring out how to advance despite adversity is sort of the name of the game in both motherhood and small business ownership. Just this last winter we bought a building and moved our business and opened a brick and mortar space where kids can come and create their own sensory kits. From a huge renovation, to spreading our energies thinner than we would have liked, what a beautiful chaotic journey it continues to be!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.presentnotperfectllc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/present_notperfect_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/presentnotperfect2021/

Image Credits

Clear + Quiet, Claire Ogunsola