My guest today is Randi Farina, the National Sales Director of Living Fresh Collection, a new direct selling organization that focuses on sustainable bed linens. We’ll be talking about how natural bed linens enhance your sleep experience and how the Living Fresh Collection fabrics are made in a sustainable way. In 2013, Randi joined Living Fresh Collection to launch a company that would not only provide linens made with Tencel+Plus™ Lyocell (fibers from the eucalyptus tree) to enhance one’s sleep, but an opportunity to empower women by giving them the tools to own and operate their own business. After receiving her Bachelor of Art at the State University of New York, Randi started her career in 1994 with The Pampered Chef. As her business grew, the importance of providing support and mentorship to women became apparent in the success of her own organization. Her values of teamwork, personal development and achievement followed her throughout her career as her work continued with the United States Olympic Committee. Working as a licensee of the USOC, she created the first national fundraiser for the Vancouver Games. The US Olympic Team Rings Wristbands wore worn by Olympic athletes as well as fans all over the country. In 2010 Randi returned her focus to working with women as an Associate Producer for Lifetime Television’s morning show. She thrived on creating direct brand messaging to consumers, while being able to motivate women to find the very delicate balancing act between work and home life. In 2011 and 2012, Randi traveled with the Show on 10 City tours throughout the country meeting thousands of women and providing brands products & support so they could achieve their work/life balance. Returning to the direct sales industry, Randi feels as if her career has come full circle. By being able to provide support to entrepreneurial women as they grow their own businesses. Randi has found her work/life balance. Randi resides in Boca Raton, Florida with her husband and four children. www.LivingFreshCollection.com

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO Improve Your Sleep Experience with Sustainable Bed Linens

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd Guest: Randi Farina

Date of Broadcast: October 28, 2014

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. It’s Tuesday, October 29th 2014. It’s a beautiful day here in Clearwater, Florida. I slept really well last night. How well did you sleep? Maybe you don’t know this, but bed sheets, most bed sheets (unless you are buying special bed sheets that don’t have this), most bed sheets have permanent press finishes on them, which are releasing formaldehyde. And even if you’ve washed your sheets many, many times, this resin, this permanent press resin stays on your sheets and continues to release formaldehyde for many years and formaldehyde causes insomnia.

So if you’re not sleeping well, you might consider changing your sheets. This is the subject that we’re going to be talking about today with my guest, bed linens. She has some very interesting bed linens that are made in a very sustainable way. And the whole idea of the company is about helping you sleep better.

I just want to say that I slept on these sheets last night and I slept really well, really, really well. They aren’t toxic at all.

But before we talk to the guest, I want to tell you that since the beginning of this show when I started in April of last year, of 2013, I wanted to transcribe the shows because each and every show has so much valuable information in it. I wanted you to be able to read it and save it in writing. It was difficult for me to find somebody who was reliable and accurate and affordable in order to make the transcriptions.

But I finally found somebody and I now have started transcribing all the live shows. Today, for the first time, I’ve posted the ones that I have. I have I think about 12 transcriptions now. You can just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And on the sub-menu, it says ‘transcripts’. You can go to that page and you can read the transcripts of – I think last week, there’s all, but one. I have it. I just need to post it. A week before, there’s all of them. And there’s also some from the past.

And so today’s show will be transcribed, tomorrow’s, Thursday’s. All the live shows are being transcribed the week that they occur. So they can go every weekend to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com and find the transcripts for the week.

But I’m also working on transcribing all the back shows. So this is a great, big project. So go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, click on ‘transcripts’ and take a look because I’m really excited about them.

Okay! So now, we’re going to get to our guest. My guest today is Randi Farina. She’s the national sales director of The Living FRESH Collection, which is a new direct selling organization that focuses on sustainable bed linens.

Hi, Randi.

RANDI FARINA: Hi, Debra. How are you?

DEBRA: I’m good. I like your sheets.

RANDI FARINA: I’m so happy to hear that.

DEBRA: They aren’t toxic at all. When I spoke to you before, you told me I should wash them several times. I actually washed them many times before I slept on them. You told me that the more you wash them, the softer they get. And they did get softer and softer and softer. And I just went right to sleep and I slept all night. I have no problem with them at all.

RANDI FARINA: We’ve heard that from a lot of people. And we tell to wash the sheets prior not because there’s anything on them that we want off, but in the handling of all the packaging, we just want you to have the freshest experience. So right out of your washer is the freshest experience you can have.

DEBRA: Yes! And I use the laundry soap that you provide. It was just great! The whole experience was just great.

RANDI FARINA: I’m so happy to hear that. And you slept well?

DEBRA: I slept well. I slept very well. I woke up a couple of time (that’s typical for me), but I went right back to sleep. I was very comfortable and the sheets felt soft against my skin. I was just very happy, very happy.

RANDI FARINA: Great! Well, that’s what we’ve been hearing for many, many years, which made us want to bring them out to the residential arena because we’ve heard that story.

DEBRA: Well, tell us the story behind The Living FRESH Collection, how it came to be.

RANDI FARINA: Sure! Living FRESH Collection started – and let me just say that FRESH stands for ‘fabric redefining environmental standard in our home’. So Living FRESH sheets were actually sold to the hotels for the past eight years.

Our sister company, Valley Forge Fabrics started working with the hotels about eights years ago when the hotels really started getting into the sustainable aspect of not washing sheets unless the guest wanted them to, not washing towels unless the guest wanted to. The hotels were looking for a fiber that was more sustainable than cotton, yet still was able to hold up to the rigors of washing that hotels do, which is a lot more strenuous than the average person’s washing.

DEBRA: So tell us for a minute what’s not sustainable about cotton.

RANDI FARINA: Cotton is a fabulous fiber. We absolutely love it.Hopefully, people are growing it and farming it sustainably and environmentally friendly. Tencel+Plus, the fibers from Eucalyptus are above and beyond organic and they’re better than cotton in the respect that when cotton gets wet, it remains wet longer than Tencel+Plus.

So when you’re sleeping and you sweat at night (and everybody does sweat at night), cotton can remain wet. If you’re lying on it and it’s warm and it’s moist, bacteria can start to grow.

Tencel+Plus, we have studies that show us that it does dries faster than any other fiber out there. So it will dry faster than 100% cotton. Therefore, bacteria cannot grow on sheet.

DEBRA: Okay, good. Let’s go back to the story and then we’ll talk about the sheets.

RANDI FARINA: Okay, great! So the hotels wanted more of a sustainable fiber and something that was cleaner. So they started looking at bamboo and tencel and beechwood. They came to Valley Forge Fabrics who does a lot of their fabrics for upholstery and drapery and they said, “Do you do top of the bed?” We decided that we were going to start to create a sustainable fiber for hotels.

But in order for it to be used in hospitality, it has to withstand 160° of washing every single day. That’s difficult on the best of cotton.

So we went to the company and we said, “We love tencel. We love the fiber from eucalyptus. We just need something stronger that will last longer than 100% tencel or 100% cotton.”

So we created a proprietary fiber called Tencel+Plus. It is 52% cotton and 48% Tencel+Plus. It withstands the washing of everyday hospitality use and the drying. And the hotels absolutely loved it. It creates a cleaner sleep environment if these bacteria cannot grow on it. And then what a lot of the listeners don’t know yet is that eucalyptus is actually resistant to dust mites.

DEBRA: Oh, I didn’t know that.

RANDI FARINA: Yup, naturally. We do not have to put any chemicals in our sheets whatsoever to keep away the dust mites. And the dust mites are so important to be kept out of your bedroom because that’s what causes most allergens. If anybody is waking up with congestion or a cough or itchy nose or throat or red eyes, it very well could be because they are allergic or even sensitive to dust mite.

Cotton will not repel dust mites. Eucalyptus+, Tencel+Plus, eucalyptus fibers will repel up to 95% of dust mite survival. So it’s naturally resistant.

DEBRA: You know, I did notice sleeping on the sheets that they – because I sleep on cotton flannel every day of the year because they’re so soft and they are absorb perspiration better than – and moving here in Florida, even on very sweaty nights, it’s more comfortable to sleep on flannel than it is to sleep on a cotton percale sheet.

But I did notice that it just seemed like sleeping on these sheets was less dusty. Not that I’m even aware of my sheets being dusty, but I do know with my cotton sheets that as I wash them, the fabric just kind of starts thinning out until it just rips and it doesn’t stay.

So I know that there is something coming off the cotton sheets, but there was just like nothing. It was just soft and clean.

RANDI FARINA: Yup!

DEBRA: Soft and clean.

RANDI FARINA: Yup, that’s exactly right. And another great point – and we’re also based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, eucalyptus, if you’ve ever smelt it – Debra, have you ever smelled eucalyptus?

DEBRA: Oh, yeah. I used to live in California where we had eucalyptus trees all over the place.

RANDI FARINA: Fabulous! It actually draws the moisture away from your skin and it has that menthol smell to it, that menthol, which actually will draw the moisture away from the skin. Our sheets do the exact same thing.

DEBRA: We need to go to break. But when we come back, we’ll continue. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Randi Farina. She’s the national sales director of The Living FRESH Collection. You can go to her website at LivingFRESHCollection.com. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Randi Farina. She’s the national sales director of the Living FRESH Collection, which is a new direct selling organization that focuses on sustainable bed linens. Their website is LivingFRESHCollection.com.

Okay, Randi, so I want to interject that even though these sheets are made out of eucalyptus, for anybody who smelled the eucalyptus tree who thinks, “Oh, no! My bed is going to smell like eucalyptus,” the sheets don’t actually smell like eucalyptus.

RANDI FARINA: No.

DEBRA: I can’t say that they’re completely without any kind of – I don’t know which word to use here, not ‘scent’, not ‘odor’, not ‘fragrance’. I don’t want to use any word that might sound derogatory. I can smell something, but it’s not a overpoweringly eucalyptus. It just smells more like just kind of a neutral wood-ishness. But I have an extremely sensitive nose and it didn’t bother me at all. I just went, “Oh, there’s just a little something there.”

But I had no problem with it at all. There’s nothing toxic about it. It’s not like something that’s scented or something that has a formaldehyde finish, not like that at all. It was just very pleasant. It doesn’t smell overpoweringly of eucalyptus. It didn’t even remotely remind me of eucalyptus.

Well, we’re going to talk about how these sheets are made later, but I just wanted to mention that since she said it was made from eucalyptus. I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea and stop listening because they think that the sheets smell like eucalyptus.

RANDI FARINA: They don’t. They smell clean.

DEBRA: They smell clean. They smell very clean. Yes, they do.

Okay! So tell us more about the sheets. Let’s just start talking about what the sheets are made from, how they’re made because I know that tencel, Lyocell, that you have a particular way of making these, so that they don’t contain the toxic chemicals that some other similar types of fabrics use toxic chemicals like some of the bamboos.

We should probably say that Lyocell, tencel is similar to what people know as Rayon where – I’ll just give a little background here. And then you can tell the details. Rayon and tencel are made from cellulose, bits of cellulose that are then processed in a certain way to turn it into a fiber.

Now, the difference here, if you have cotton, for example, is that cotton has a cellulose, but cotton, it’s like a cotton ball. It really is like a cotton ball in the plant. And so it’s pulled apart, the cotton ball is pulled apart and then it’s spun into a thread, but there’s actually a fiber there.

The difference here with Rayon and tencel is they take wood cellulose to make these. In most cases, it’s a wood. And then, they break it down into little bits of cellulose, which then gets mixed into array and extruded into a thread instead of there being a fiber.

And so what’s unique and sustainable about this particular one is that they have a very non-toxic process.

So Randi, I want you to just explain, give us a really good picture of what this fiber is from the beginning, from the three to the sheets.

RANDI FARINA: Sure. Well, we only take our eucalyptus fibers from FSA-protected forest. We don’t have a farm. We go straight to FSA-protected forest. They can tell us exactly how much we can cut down. And the only thing that is used to help grow the eucalyptus trees is water and sunshine. So there’s no chemicals used in the production or the growing of the trees.

We cut the tree down about ten inches from their root, which allow them to grow back to full maturity in five to eight years.

DEBRA: I’ll add that eucalyptus is a very fast-growing tree.

RANDI FARINA: Yes, yeah, absolutely.

DEBRA: I grew up with eucalyptus trees.

RANDI FARINA: There you go! We use the pulp of the tree. So there are also people out there that have asked us, “I’m allergic to eucalyptus oil. Can I still sleep on your sheet?” and the answer is yes.

So we use the pulp of the tree and we boil it down with water. We actually push it through a strainer. I’m going to give you a very vivid picture. I tell everybody to picture a very large sourhead and we push the wood pulp through a strainer in order to get the pulp, which actually is a paper pulp. When it comes out on the other side, it’s just like a paper pulp.

We take that paper pulp and we mix it with one organic solvent. The name of the solvent is NNMO. It’s organic. It looks like honey. It can actually be drunk. We mix it together to create our fibers.

At our Sleep Wellness Shows (and we do presentations introducing people to Living FRESH collection), we have a small box. It’s called our ‘create a textile box’. We actually passed it around so you can see and feel and touch the pulp of the eucalyptus wood chip, we show you the next process, which is the paper pulp. And then we show you the finished result, which is our Tencel+Plus fibers derived from the eucalyptus. We pass it around and it looks like cotton. It has more of a sheen to it and it also is much softer. So I tell people, “It looks like cotton, but it feels like cashmere.” From those fibers, we are able to get our thread, which we mix 52% cotton and 48% Tencel+Plus to weave our actual linen.

You had said earlier that this goes around another process. People ask this question all the time, Debra and I would like to bring it to everyone’s attention because everyone knows bamboo is a very sustainable fiber because it grows fast as well. And we love bamboo tables, bamboo vases. But when you take bamboo and you break it down into a fiber, they use 13 toxic chemicals to do so in their process to create the Viscose Rayon as opposed to our one organic solvent that we use, which makes Tencel+Plus sheets much more sustainable. And also, because our Tencel+Plus sheets are made for the hospitality industry, much more durable.

A lot of times, even sometimes with cotton, when you take their sheets out of the dryer, you’ll notice that the dryer fills with lint. Nobody really wonders where that came from, but you had said like you didn’t feel any dust in the bedroom. All that lint and all that dust is actually your fibers breaking down.

DEBRA: Yes, yes. I know! Even now, every time I wash my cotton flannel sheets, I get a lot of lint in the dryer. And there was no lint from these sheets. I will tell you, there was no lint from these sheets. It was really quite amazing.

RANDI FARINA: Great!

DEBRA: We need to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and my guest today is Randi Farina, the national sales director of the Living FRESH Collection. You can visit their website at LivingFRESHCollection.com. They have more information there about all the things we were just talking about, about how the product is made. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Randi Farina. She’s the national sales director of the Living FRESH Collection, a new direct selling organization that focuses on sustainable bed linens. Their website is LivingFRESHCollection.com.

So Randi, I know that one of the things about your bed linens in addition to the way they’re produced is that they create a healthier sleep environment. I’m really interested in that because sleep is so important to health for so many reasons. But my particular interest is that your body needs to sleep in order for it to detox toxic chemicals. If people are having difficulties sleeping, that means that their detox function is not working to the optimum.

And also, if anybody is trying to lose weight, you need to sleep in order for your body to lose weight. That’s just a known thing about weight loss. And there’s so many other things. I mean, you just can’t concentrate or work well or all these things if you don’t sleep well. And so tell us how these particular bed linens contribute to creating a healthy sleep environment.

RANDI FARINA: Sure, absolutely. I did not know that about detoxing, but we always say if you’re not resting and your body’s not rejuvenating during the night, then you’re not the best you can be the very next day.

DEBRA: Absolutely.

RANDI FARINA: And it’s interesting because in today’s world. Everybody’s doing everything correctly. They’re eating right, they’re working out. But how many of us are really considering our sleep environment? And that’s what the education that we’re trying to bring to everybody. For eight hours a day, you’re wrapping yourself in products that you probably aren’t giving much thought to. And for eight hours, if you give the thought and wrapped yourself in the best products, your body will be able to rest and rejuvenate.

So Tencel+Plus sheet as you’ve said at the very beginning are probably the softest, most luxurious sheet you can sleep on. Because of the eucalyptus fibers, they draw the moisture out of your body.

Most people wake up during the night from a tactile imbalance or a temperature imbalance. Most of us are either hot or cold and that may wake us up. The Tencel+Plus sheet will help you regulate the body temperature, they will draw the heat out of your body, when you do sweat (and like I said, everybody does, just some people sweat more than others when they sleep, which is probably a good thing if you’re detoxing), the sweat is absorbed by your sheet.

Tencel+Plus will draw the moisture to the center of the sheet, it’ll absorb it quicker, but it will also release faster than any other fiber. One hundred percent cotton or cotton poly or Rayon or silk will remain wet. And that’s a lot of reason why people wake up. If you just set a poll and say, “Are you cold or are you hot at night?”, most people say they’re both. That’s because the sweat makes them hot, but then the cooling off of the sweat lying on their bodies makes them cold again.

DEBRA: Yes, I’ve experienced that. It’s always I’m either putting the covers on or taking the covers off.

RANDI FARINA: …which wakes people up at night. Absolutely, absolutely. And that’s exactly what the Tencel+Plus sheet will allow you, to regulate your body temperature. You will still sweat at night, but not as much because you’re going to be able to breathe better. And then if you do sweat, it’ll absorb the moisture and wick away from your body and then release it quicker.

When we first came out, we had a great amount of testimonials. They’re all on our website and I invite everybody to come read them. But a lot of times, we were hearing from menopausal women who swore they no longer were sweating at night after sleeping on our sheet. And when I asked them to write the testimonial, they said, “Well, let me just double-check and make sure,” they put their old sheets back on and the next day, they would call and say, “Okay, it’s definitely your sheet. I will write you a testimonial.”

DEBRA: Oh, wow!

RANDI FARINA: We have a young mom up in the Seattle, Washington area who was done with wake-up crying every night. His pajamas were soaking wet because he would sweat so much. So again, it’s not just menopausal women who were sweating a lot.

She changed his bedding. We do have everything from the encasement for a crib all the way up to [inaudible 00:30:46]. He was no longer waking up. And because of that, he wasn’t waking crying in the middle of the night from being wet, he was sleeping through the night and so was his mother was sleeping through the night. So it was helping everybody to get that rest that they so desperately need.

DEBRA: That’s great. That’s great. I just know how good it feels for me to have a good night’s sleep. I know many, many years ago when I first started (like 30 years ago when I started discovering about toxic chemicals), I remember I used to have insomnia. All night, I would not be able to sleep and then I’d be exhausted in the morning. This just went on week after week after week. It was very hard for me to sleep. And then when I started doing research into toxic chemicals and I found that formaldehyde on the bedsheets causes insomnia, I said, “Oh, my God! I’m going to get rid of these polyester cotton sheets.” And at that time, it was very difficult to find a 100% cotton sheet. But I found the one brand that was available and I changed my sheets. That very night, I slept. It just really made a difference.

And so I’ve been telling people for 30 years that if you can’t sleep, switch away from the polyester cotton with the formaldehyde finish and go to a cotton sheet with no finish on it.

RANDI FARINA: Yeah, it makes a world of difference.

DEBRA: It does, it does. And it sounds like this is really a whole new type of bed linen that hasn’t existed before. It has even more benefits.

RANDI FARINA: It has a lot of health benefits. Just sleeping well has a lot of health benefits. We’ve heard study after study of high blood pressure, diabetes, you had mentioned obesity, people not sleeping well, their hormones are not regulating if they are not sleeping well. There’s one study that we’ve heard out of Stanford, California about people who were doing a study on what causes depression. They were able to keep people up at night, sleep deprive them and they were able to basically get them to have every symptom that a depressed person to have. The conclusion was how many of us are depressed and overwhelmed in life and how many of us really just need a good night sleep?

DEBRA: I think probably everybody is not sleeping well. I know that’s a really broad statement. But between sleeping on formaldehyde sheets and drinking coffee and toxic things in your body and stress and worry, how many people really sleep well?

I know that it’s made a big difference for me to make sure that I sleep well, a big difference in my health. And yet I think that most people just think the way they sleep is average or normal and don’t really know what a really good night sleep is.

RANDI FARINA: Right! That’s the message that we’re trying to give around the country when we give our Sleep Wellness Shows. It’s to try to really educate people on creating a cleaner, healthier, more luxurious sleep environment and opening up their eyes to understanding, number one, how important sleep is and number two, how important it is to consider what you’re already sleeping in. So you make that cleaner and healthier, it’s just going to allow everyone to sleep better and then obviously, if we’re sleeping better, we’re going to be performing much better the very next day.

DEBRA: Yes, and happier. It just feels wonderful. It just feels wonderful when you’ve had a good night’s sleep and you wake up in the morning. We need to go to break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Randi Farina. She is the national sales director Living FRESH Collection. You can find out more at the LivingFRESHCollection.com and when we come back after the break.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Randi Farina. She’s the national sales director of Living FRESH Collection. Their website is LivingFRESHCollection.com.

Randi, I feel like I should play a lullaby for the music today.

DEBRA: To get everybody to sleep better.

RANDI FARINA: Get everybody to sleep better, yeah. So I have your catalog here and also, you have a printed catalog and you also have a website. I’m looking at your catalog. You have all kinds of different types of products made with tencel. And one of the things that I really like about the sheets that I have is that they’re just your basic, beautiful, clean, white sheets. But you also have them in colors and patterns. Just give us an idea the different kinds of products that you sell.

RANDI FARINA: Sure, everything that we make is made with Tencel+Plus. We start off at the very first layer of what you should be covering your mattress with and that’s a 100% Tencel+Plus, 100% bed bug resistant and dust mite resistant encasement.

People don’t really understand, but mattresses do double their weight in eight years if not protected. And just imagine if your body is sweating and your mattress is soaking in that sweat, it could act like a sponge. Bacteria could grow inside. So the most important thing…

DEBRA: Especially if you have a natural fiber mattress. I just want to interject that because a lot of people, they’ll switch from a polyurethane mattress, the synthetic mattress and then they’ll go to natural mattress and that’s one of the things, one of the drawbacks of a natural mattress. It’s natural, it’s biodegradable. It absorbs water. It can grow bacteria. They do need to protect their mattress.

RANDI FARINA: Yeah.

DEBRA: I just want to clarify that a mattress encasement, that goes all the way around the mattress and then zippered.

RANDI FARINA: Correct.

DEBRA: And so if you’re concerned about bed bugs or those things, then you should have a mattress encasement and that’s different from a mattress pad, which you also have.

RANDI FARINA: Correct. Our encasement actually has a [inaudible 00:41:06] lock on it, which is patented so it’s very easy for a human to open, but it can’t be opened. The bed bugs will stay out of it and bacteria will stay in or out depending on where it is.

After that, we do have a fabulous mattress pad, again, made with the Tencel+Plus. Our mattress pad has a full covering, so it looks like a sheet, but the top is very well padded to give you that extra layer of comfort.

We have our sheet set. And like you said, Debra, we started off with white and ivory. And just this past month, we released two wonderful colors, silver and denim. So those are our first two colors of the collection.

We have pillow protectors because the same thing that happens to your mattresses can happen with your pillows probably even more so from sweating and drooling. It’s important to cover your pillows. We make our own pillows and they are filled with Tencel+Plus as well. At least 30% Tencel+Plus will make them dust mite resistant, so our products are also hypoallergenic.

We also just launched two great towels. We have a spa collection, which is wonderful, white, soft and cozy, which is 70% cotton and 30% Tencel+Plus so it drives faster. It also uses less water and less drying time to clean the towel. My favorite product is our Mediterranean towel, which is original Turkish towel much thinner than a spa towel, but super absorbent. So if you can imagine that the eucalyptus draws the moisture away from your skin, imagine how absorbent it would make a towel. So that’s my one favorite.

DEBRA: And I’m looking at the picture of the Mediterranean towels. It’s very pretty. It’s got little tiny stripes, a little border of stripes and it’s got fringe, knotted fringe.

RANDI FARINA: And the fringe is not an ornament. The fringe is actually the thread that runs from the entire length of the towel and then knotted. So a lot of times, towel companies will just put on a pretty ornament and then they don’t actually wash well, but these fringes are the part of the towel. So in two years, three years, the towel will look just as beautiful as the very first day you got it.

We created a sleepwear collection, classic pajamas for women and boxers for men because people said how much they loved to wrap themselves in our sheets. We thought how fabulous to wrap yourself in our sheeting materials, so we created pajamas. We use the exact, same material, so they also get softer with each wash.

And then like you mentioned at the very beginning of this show, we did a laundry detergent for no reason other than since our linens are natural and clean, we didn’t want any residues left. You probably know a lot about what would go into a detergent. So we used an all-natural, no synthetic fragrances or dyes to create it.

There is a scent made from the eucalyptus oil. It’s a eucalyptus aloe scent going into the washing machine, but no scent at all left on the sheet.

DEBRA: And I will vouch for that. I will vouch for that. And the thing about scent is that natural fragrances like essential oils, they will tend to wash out and disappear.

In fact, here’s a little non-historic fact. The first synthetic fragrance perfume was made by Coco Chanel, the famous designer. The reason that she wanted a synthetic fragrance was because the fragrances women used then were all natural essential oils and they wouldn’t last throughout the evening.

And so Coco Chanel just happened to be there when they were making synthetic fragrances. Chanel no. 5 was the first synthetic fragrance. Those synthetic fragrances last and last and last and last. And so if you wash in detergent that has a synthetic fragrance, you’re not going to be able to get that out. I mean, really, you have to use other things to get the detergent out.

RANDI FARINA: Right! And we didn’t want any residue left on our linens.

DEBRA: So there’s none. There’s none. Your laundry detergent was totally fine.

RANDI FARINA: We also make wonderful duvet covers. Our duvet covers and our pillows are also machine washable and dryable, which you can’t say for a lot of other people or duvet covers out there, so they can create a cleaner, healthier, more luxurious sleep environment. To complete our entire collections, our shams that would go on top of the duvet cover that are beautiful and classic with a baratta stitch that complements the entire collection.

DEBRA: So people can order this on your website. But you also do parties. So tell us about those.

RANDI FARINA: We do, we do. We’re a direct sales company and we chose to go that route, so you won’t find our linens on any store shelves. You have to buy them exclusively through sleep consultants, Living FRESH Collection sleep consultants. We launched last July and we are now in 18 states.

So we go around the country and we do our Sleep Wellness parties. Some people call them Wine & Sheet Parties and serve some wonderful appetizers with it as well. But we’re not just about selling sheets. We are really about teaching people to create a cleaner, healthier sleep environment. And because we are a direct sales company, we are really able to keep the cost of the end user much lower than if we had to put it on shelves. And more importantly, we just want to be able to tell the story of why our sheets are different and why they really, really help you sleep better. We do that through our sleep consultants.

DEBRA: These really are sheets – I’ve said this before, but I’ll just say it again. These really are sheets unlike anything else that I’ve ever seen. They’re specifically designed, I would say just from looking at them, to have qualities that would help you sleep better rather than sheets of yesterday I guess.

I mean, I have nothing against a beautiful cotton sheet, but most sheets that you’re going to find on the store shelves are polyester cotton sheets with formaldehyde finishes on them and it certainly isn’t anything like this. Those sheets were designed around existing fibers and these sheets are designed with a particular purpose of how are we going to get a good sleep environment, how are we going to make a sheet that’s durable and purposes like that.

So that’s not something that you’re going to be able to put on a label and get people to understand by putting it in a store. It certainly is a new and interesting product and I’m glad that you did it.

Here’s another thing that I just wanted to mention. You have a USDA approval that it’s bio-based. Tell us about that.

RANDI FARINA: Yes, we are the only sheet company out there that is USDA certified bio based for both residential and hospitality use. We’re also the only sheet fabric out there that is fiber verified. Because our process is so soft, if you took our sheets and put them under a microscope, they can tell that they are eucalyptus. So they are fiber verified and USDA bio-based. Other sheets (for instance, bamboo sheets) cannot be fiber verified because they’ve gone through so many processes.

DEBRA: Oh, I see what you’re saying.

RANDI FARINA: So we are very proud of that certification.

DEBRA: I see what you’re saying. The eucalyptus quality, that actually, eucalyptus is still there and it can be seen through the microscope.

RANDI FARINA: That’s correct.

DEBRA: Well, thank you so much for being with us and explaining all of these, Randi. It’s very interesting. Again, the website is LivingFRESHCollection.com. We’ve got about 30 seconds. Any last thing you’d like to say?

RANDI FARINA: Yeah, I just want everybody to really understand how important it is to create a cleaner, healthier sleep environment so they can be the best possible person they can be.

DEBRA: Okay, good. Thank you.

RANDI FARINA: Thanks, Debra.

DEBRA: You’re welcome. So again, I want to mention as I did at the beginning of the show that all of the shows are now being transcribed so you can read this show as well as listen to it at ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. Just go there and look on the sub-menu for the transcripts page and click on ‘transcripts’. I already have about a dozen transcripts up from past shows I think and we’ll keep making the transcriptions so that you can have a written record of the valuable information that’s on each of these shows.

Again, you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.