After 22 years, longtime Tribecan and longtime local PTA president Nicki Francis has decided to wrap up her business, Khushi Spa Products, at least for now — her nieces are serious about picking up where she leaves off in January. (That’s Nicki in the center, with her two longtime helpers: Tribecans Gigi Grassi and Sophie Cook.) She will take her last order on December 28.

Nicki has been making her all-natural line of skin care products in her kitchen and office on Hudson since 2003, when the idea was born at a family gathering in Ohio. Just for fun as a holiday project, she and her sisters and her mother made some lotions and soaps and the next year Nicki made them herself for friends. Those friends then begged her for more. Before kids, Nicki was in the fashion industry, doing design and product development, so she knew how to cost out ingredients. “One day I was looking at my spreadsheet and I said to my husband, ‘I’m making money here.'”

For two decades, she kept the operation small and essentially homemade — only her soaps are outsourced, made in Montana by a man who also grows lavender on his farm. And she’s had a great time from the start. “The only problem with shutting things down is I looove doing it — I love the creating and mixing,” she said. But she knew it was time. Her mother and aunt, whom she considered her mother, both died this year, “and it made me think, life is short — I need a little bit more freedom.”

And she felt like the business had run its course over its two decades.

Nicki spent nine years on the PTA board at PS 234 — two of them as president and many others as vice president and secretary — and six years straight as president of the PTA at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School. Even after she rolled off the boards, she continued to help raise money for discrete projects, like the renovation of the 234 yard. She fit Khushi in between those hours and when her family needed the kitchen. “I enjoyed it!” she said of her time on the PTAs. “And it helps you get integrated into the community.”

Now she hopes to get back to some of that. She’s suspending sales between December 19 and 24; she will take her last order on December 28. And she’s getting comfortable with her new phase and new plan.

“I feel great about it. I’ll crochet more and bake more and volunteer more,” she said. And, as if she hadn’t done that enough, “I want to give back more.”