My guest today is Kim Mendes, Founder of Yoreganics, a small family business that makes laundry and skin products based on “revisiting simple, like the days of yore, when Mother Nature’s ingredients were used to heal our bodies naturally.” We’ll be talking about Kim’s philosophy and her products and how she, as a mother, decided she had to “take charge to become an advocate for myself and my family.” Her lighthearted blog is filled with humor and poetry. www.yoreganics.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Natural Laundry and Sensitive Skin from the Days of Yore
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Kim Mendes
Date of Broadcast: September 16, 2015
DEBRA: Hi. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic free.
It is Wednesday, September 16th, 2015. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And I think all of you are all over the world. I know, I look sometimes and see where people are listening. I know that people are listening all over the planet and I think that that’s really wonderful because toxics is a problem all over the planet and I am hoping that you’re all learning things that you can apply in your daily life.
I just want to say that I think I’m sounding happier today. I wonder if you suddenly noticed, “Wow! She sounds really happy today.” I am feeling happier today. I’m feeling more optimistic. The more I do this work, the more optimistic I feel that we’re actually doing something and there are things that we can do and that the problems of toxics can be solved. I was just thinking before I started today how much I really enjoy doing this show and that’s probably why I sound so happy.
Anyway, my guest today decided that she needed to take charge and become an advocate for herself and her family and do something to have the products that she and her family needed. And so we’re going to be talking about her natural laundry and sensitive skincare products that are based on how things were done in days of yore. Her name is Kim Mendes. She’s the founder of Yoreganics. Hi, Kim.
KIM MENDES: Hey. How are you?
DEBRA: I’m fine. I want to say that I think that I feel like I already know you from looking at your website because you have pictures and poetry and I think that your personality really comes across.
KIM MENDES: Oh, thanks.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. So tell us your story of how you got interested in doing Yoreganics.
KIM MENDES: Yeah, there were just a lot of different things going on in my life at the time. I was starting college basically, all pain-free living and happy times were going on throughout my life. And once I got to college, which was such a great time, once I started eating a little differently, all of a sudden, things started changing and I didn’t realize the correlation until years later. But cereal and ice cream for breakfast, then a little alcohol sprinkled in there and late night big burritos. My head somehow piled up into toxicity overload.
DEBRA: Yes.
KIM MENDES: Yeah. So I was going through a lot of chronic pain and I wasn’t able to play my last year of tennis in college and all these different things started happening. I was getting X-rays and I was going to physical therapy, all these different labs test trying to figure out what’s wrong with me like arthritic pain and chronic plantar fascitis pain, all these different things.
So I was trying all the different routes. This happened for years. And then, I just decided that I guess I just have to live with it.
And then, I did a surgery on my foot for the pain. And actually, it didn’t end up going away. It ended up being the same.
So long story short, I was on the way home from this one doctor appointment that I thought was going to be my last resort effort and it didn’t work. So I just said, “Okay, I’m either going to suck it up and live with the pain for the rest of my life,” my oldest daughter was only a year and a half at the time, “or I’m going to just figure out a different way.” There has got to be a different path out there.
So after all that, I ended up starting with a chiropractor. I started really researching into alternative methods and that really was a whole different world to me. So shifting my mind and mentality to just more of an open-mind concept, I started doing that and really taking classes from my chiropractor. He would always have open forums and explain about health and toxicity and how they go hand in hand and in our environment, in our food and everything that goes around us.
I also have an interior design business that I started going green with and learning more about that. And one thing led to another and it was kind of like, “Wow! My design clients wanted something that they could depend on” and there were definitely a handful of products out there. But at the same time, my girls were having skin sensitivities.
So all these things in my little web were coming together. Once I switched my diet for myself, I think it was a month and a half later, my pain was gone. I started doing green smoothies. If I was going to do beef, it was grass-fed beef. I had taken out gluten. I was completely shocked on what a difference that made.
DEBRA: It really is amazing about the diet. I have spent in my own life many years transforming my diet and I have tried many different diets. And the first step for me was just to stop eating packaged foods, stop eating processed foods, stop eating ice cream for dinner – I used to eat a whole bag of cookies for dinner or chocolate cake. That was my dinner.
KIM MENDES: I know! And what’s wrong with that if you sprinkle kale on top? It’s not a lot of work.
DEBRA: I know! Yeah. When I was a kid, I used to have this favorite ice cream. It was called Cherry Cherie. It had little bits of cherries and little bits of chocolate chips in it. I would sit there in front of the TV and eat the whole half gallon. And one night, I decided I wanted to eat a whole coconut cream pie. This was really how I ate.
So the first thing that I did was I just decided that I wasn’t going to eat any more packaged food, but I could still eat cookies if I made them.
And then, I just started eliminating things one by one. I stopped eating wheat. I stopped eating white sugar. I still eat dairy, but I also eat all kinds of other things that I never would have thought that I would eat as a child like coconut oil or garbanzo beans. It’s like my diet is so different, but my body feels so different.
KIM MENDES: Yeah!
DEBRA: Until you really start getting all that stuff out, you don’t really see. It’s so interesting. I am so glad that you brought this up because there may be a lot of people who have pain that are listening and they’re looking for an herbal pain relief or something like that. I am not saying you shouldn’t use herbal pain relief, but relieving pain can be as simple as changing your diet (not that changing your diet is always simple).
KIM MENDES: As simple and difficult as changing your diet, right?
DEBRA: Yeah, as simple and difficult, exactly right.
KIM MENDES: Yes.
DEBRA: Yeah, I think that’s right. Typically, I think that food is so important. I just want to ask you typically what you eat now.
KIM MENDES: It’s funny. I think it was six and a half years ago, I started Yoreganic. I was so hardcore and so strict on everything. I started being so judgy on every single thing, which was good and served me well for a while, but then, it kind of got into almost like a freakish modus, “Oh, my gosh! I’m surrounded in toxic everything. I just need to rent a bubble and my family and I can float off into the universe and not be around any of it.”
DEBRA: I totally understand.
KIM MENDES: Yeah. So that became a little obsessive. So since that time, I’ve really cranked it back. I’m more into believing the lifestyle that we’re all doing the best we can. The more knowledge we have, we move forward on what works for us. And you know what, what works for me doesn’t work for everyone else.
But typically, I try to start my day with a green smoothie. So I throw in some greens with either spinach or kale, maybe add half a banana and add some either strawberries or blueberries, whatever fresh and in season or frozen. I add a little water and blend it all up. I can add chia seeds. I really just try to experiment with different things. And some of the days, I may get and I was like, “Wow! That one isn’t so tasty,” but you chug it down.
DEBRA: I’ve had that experience.
KIM MENDES: Yeah. At first, I used to get frustrated. I was like, “Oh, my gosh! How can I ruin this?” And then it is like, “Just do it.”
DEBRA: Just do it and try. Many years ago, I made a dinner for my boyfriend at that time and I remember exactly what it was. It was Shepherd’s pie except instead of using mashed potatoes and meat, I used sweet potatoes for the crust and lentils for the interior. He took one bite and he said, “I don’t want at all to scrooge you from cooking for us and try things new, but this is horrible.”
KIM MENDES: I get it. I get it. I know.
DEBRA: Yeah. Sometimes it just doesn’t work, but you have to try it. You just have to try and find what it is you like.
KIM MENDES: Yeah, and not be discouraged by all that.
DEBRA: Yeah. So we need to go to break. When we come back, we’ll hear more from Kim Mendes, founder of Yoreganics. She’s at Yoreganics.com. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Kim Mendes. She’s the founder of Yoreganics at Yoreganics.com.
Okay, so Kim, you stopped being in pain because you changed your diet. What led you to start a business making your laundry and sensitive skincare products?
KIM MENDES: Yeah. Basically at the same time that I was finally relieving my pain through dietary ways, I was researching more products for healthier interior design and cleaning is such a large part of that. My youngest daughter was having extremely sensitive skin and she was prone to eczema breakouts. So I really started researching on all of that and realized through research that besides dietary, laundry and body care are two major triggers for eczema, couperose and psoriasis and all that kind of stuff, all kinds of skin things.
And so, I started doing research. My first product was soap nuts, which are actually dried fruit berries from the Himalayan Mountains.
They’re not actually nuts. They’re fruit berries and they’re growing in the Himalayans.
We work with a family in Northern India that harvests them. They take out the seed and then what’s left in the husk of the shell is called saponin. Saponin, when added to water, creates a natural soap. So part of these crazy berries go into a flask or a little cotton bag. You put them in the washing machine (they work in standard and high efficiency machines), you ou let them do their thing and they’re replacing your detergents and fabric softeners and you use them over and over, 5 to 10 times until all the saponins have been used up.
So your clothes are just naturally clean without having that toxic fake smell. And the berries are biodegradable and you just start all over again.
DEBRA: I love soap nuts! I just absolutely love them. I’ve been using them for about five or six years and I’m recommending them. There’s just no point in using anything else. There are some natural soap and detergent cleaning products for laundry, but I just soap nuts. And what I find is that my clothing gets really soft.
KIM MENDES: It is because there’s no detergent residue buildup.
DEBRA: There’s no buildup, no residue at all.
KIM MENDES: Yeah.
DEBRA: And they’re really easy to use once you get the hang of the fact that you’re putting these soap nuts in a bag.
KIM MENDES: Of course.
DEBRA: And then, you have to find the little bag afterwards…
KIM MENDES: Yeah. That’s why I tell my customers too, whatever works best for you. So I find a funky long sock and I put them in there and just knot the end of the sock, so it’s not like, “Where’s Waldo?” at the end of the washing machine. It’s like, “Where are you, little guy?”
DEBRA: Yeah.
KIM MENDES: So pull out the socks, put it inside for the next load and just load again.
DEBRA: That’s a great idea.
KIM MENDES: Yeah. When I launched that, people are like, “What about stains? And what about bleaching and that kind of thing?”, so I worked for the formulator to help me create a stain remover. I created these three products. I get the most compliments on that one. That takes out ink, blood, chocolate, food grease, car grease, a plethora of things, salad dressings, spaghetti sauce, life little mishaps like [inaudible 00:17:26], all that kind of funny stuff.
So that’s my stain remover. It even takes out the greasy satin stains that have already been through washer and dryer.
DEBRA: I need that one. I need that product.
KIM MENDES: Yeah, I know. I can’t wait to send you a package. I’m sorry, the timing was a little off, but I’ll get it to you.
DEBRA: Okay.
KIM MENDES: And then the Brightens and Whitens is a natural bleach alternative. So you can use it as a laundry enhancer or you can use it as pre-soak. So it’s just basically sodium bicarbonate, soda ash. There’s nothing else there. It has to be activated and used in warm to hot water. But that can take out coffee, tea, juice, wine, berries, tomatoes, beets, baby foods. Some of the stain abilities are shared by both of them. So the stain remover is more geared towards really those greasy, greasy things too. And yeah, we’ve done the Brightens and Whitens soap.
For me, I have my soap nuts. And then, I’ll do a couple of tablespoons of the diluted Brightens and Whitens. I just pour it in the liquid bleach dispenser or the detergent dispenser depending on the high efficiency or you can just add it into the water before you add your clothes for a standard machine.
DEBRA: It’s very easy to do.
KIM MENDES: Yeah. So I call that my laundry trio. They work great together. What I find is a lot of people, including myself, it’s like you’re ready to go to the next level sometimes about what you are willing to sacrifice for toxicity and for the earth and for your health and everything, but you still want it to work.
DEBRA: That’s right. I used to work 20 years ago for a business. I was actually a co-founder of this business. It was back in 1990 when there were none of these kinds of products on the market. What we were trying to do was to figure out how we’re going to sell green products.
We did some research and what we found was that people were willing to buy something that was better for the earth or better for the health, they were willing to pay more money for them, but it had to work as well or better as the toxic things.
KIM MENDES: Right.
DEBRA: That really is the thing. If it doesn’t work, there’s just no point.
KIM MENDES: There’s no point.
DEBRA: There’s just no point.
KIM MENDES: Yes.
DEBRA: There’s just not point. And what I found for myself is that a lot of these things that are natural and organic actually work better than the toxic thing and that they’re more comfortable. Organic food tastes better, organic food tastes a lot better. It’s much more comfortable to wear a cotton shirt than a polyester shirt.
So if you just step out of the toxic world – I mean, been so many years for me since I’ve used any of those things. This is just like what’s normal and natural for me now, to live this way and find these products and enjoy using them.
And I’m willing to learn a new skill, how to put those soap nuts in the laundry. Sometimes, you have to learn a new skill in order to make a change, but it’s not like it’s so difficult. It’s just learning something new.
KIM MENDES: Yeah, just keeping your mind open to different possibilities. Yeah, absolutely.
DEBRA: Yeah, that’s good. We need to go to break in about 15 seconds. When we come back, we will talk more with Kim about her non-toxic life and her sensitive skin products. She’s the founder of Yoreganics and it’s at Yoreganics.com. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio and we’ll be right back.
KIM MENDES: Okay.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Kim Mendes, founder of Yoreganics. Kim, would you tell us the story about Yoreganics? What’s behind Yoreganics?
KIM MENDES: Yeah. Actually, this sounds crazy, but it’s Kim Mendes, like “Wendy’s.”
DEBRA: Oh, okay. Thank you.
KIM MENDES: No problem. Basically, I really love vintage stuff and I was into the concept of [inaudible 00:27:04] and the interior design stuff. I do all that kind of stuff. So I went to this vintage organic trade market and long story short, it wasn’t available.
And then, I just got toying around with different things to call my business and I wrote down ‘yore’ one day not even knowing what it meant. I looked it up on the dictionary, it said, “In the days of yore,” which is my whole concept, going backwards to revisiting simple. And then I just combine it with ‘organic’. So it’s Yoreganic. It messes people up a lot or a little bit sometimes, but yeah, that’s the whole concept of my line. It is just to have less for products for more uses.
Originally, when I started, I was just trying to have all these different scents and all these different things and it just really started to get more complicated and I really wanted it to be so simplistic. A lot of people are always like, “You should have this and you should have this,” which I of course love. I love external feedback. But at the same time, I have to see that to keep it as true to the name and as true to the concept of what I am looking for, I don’t want everything to be so – I’m not trying to be one thing to everyone.
But those who do seek out, especially for skin sensitivities, they’re madly in love with what I do have. It’s not to say that I’ll never offer anything else. [Inaudible 00:28:39]. I do have the body care line, which basically consists of the Yore Wash, which can double for bathing and shaving. That has a soft lavender essential oil in it. It’s great for the face, the whole body, sensitive skin, private parts, itching, redness, irritation, dry cracks, cradle cap, rashes, booboos, bug bites, sunburn, all that, everything.
DEBRA: Yes. Yes.
KIM MENDES: So I had it all for men, women and babies basically. It’s the whole family. I like the fact that that can be in your shower and everyone can use it. It’s not like you need mom’s soap, dad’s soap and babies and kids, all these different scents.
And I also sell it in half gallons, so you can keep the pump you started with, the eight ounce pump and then just for the environment and economically, you buy a half gallon and you just fill it up.
DEBRA: I want to mention that this wash is a foaming wash. And if you’ve never used foaming soap, I just love this. I don’t know why they didn’t invent it sooner because instead of having a lot of soap coming out when you squirt, it’s all puffed up into a foam. You just get a smaller amount, so it lasts longer. But it also goes just smoothly in your skin. I love it.
There’s something else I want to say about the half gallon. I don’t remember what it was, but go head.
KIM MENDES: Yeah. I was going to say I do have actually two [inaudible 00:30:17]. I have a foaming wash and then I have a Yore Wash.
The Yore Wash is for bathing or shaving the whole body. And then, the foaming wash can also be used for that, but it’s not as thick and moisturizing.
DEBRA: Oh, I see.
KIM MENDES: Yeah. So my foaming wash can be used as cleaning for your home and for your body. So I use it in the kitchen, I do dishes with it, I can wash the counter with it. Of course, I sprinkle some baking soda and scrub the sinks and toilets and tubs with it. And it can also be used in the shower for full body as well and at the bathroom countertop.
But for those who want extra moisturizing, the Yore Wash is thicker. It has a high content of jojoba oil, which naturally mimics the sebum, the oil of your skin. So people really love that. And I don’t use any chemical emulsifiers, so it will separate. When it sits for a while, it looks like a salad dressing and that just shows that you’re really seeing all the jojoba oil rising to the top. You just give it a little shake and it’s good again.
DEBRA: Yeah. It’s like learning to use soap nuts. You just learn to shake up your bottle and then you don’t have to have those chemicals in it.
The thing I wanted to say was that all these ingredients are organic and the prices are so affordable. I’m looking at personal care products all the time every day on websites and these are very reasonably priced.
KIM MENDES: Yeah, thank you.
DEBRA: So it really makes it simple and accessible and multi-purpose and you’re just doing what Mother Nature does.
KIM MENDES: Yeah. I am just bringing back the stuff. And then our Yore Balm, that and the Yore Wash happened to be the top two selling in that category. But the Yore Balm is certified organic. It goes on super smooth. You can use it with the face, elbows and cracked heels. Gosh! I usually give my eight-hour infomercial on it, but basically, what I ended up saying is use it anywhere you have skin. So people are like, “What about lips?”, I’m like, “Yup!” “What about here?” “Yup!” Anywhere!
And it’s just not skin. I have people that, “Yes, I used it on our chickens today. The one chicken [inaudible 00:32:55] It was all messed up. I put some Yore Balm on there. Oh, great!”
My husband one day said, “My shoes were all messed up. I put it on my shoes to kind of like bust them out.” And I said, “You know what? I used it on the hinge of my door because it kept squeaking going down to the laundry room.” I said, “You know what? I’m going to add one more use. I’d put it [inaudible 00:33:16].”
It’s getting a little excessive. We got in a car accident last year. I’m like, “I wish my Yore Balm would just fix that too.”
DEBRA: These basic simple things do end up having many uses because they just work on everything.
KIM MENDES: Of course.
DEBRA: It sounds like that these are really good things to have around the house for many uses. It’s inexpensive and it has no artificial scent. There’s nothing that would irritate.
Even before I did this work, I know that people in my family had especially rashes on their legs and they would just itch and itch and scratch.
It just gets all irritated and bleeding and everything because you are scratching so much. It turned out that it was just their laundry detergent. When they changed the laundry detergent, they stopped itching.
KIM MENDES: Yeah, it is amazing.
DEBRA: Yeah. I mean there are so many irritants and so much toxic stuff in those laundry detergents. So to have something natural – and really, if anybody has sensitive skin or skin problems, it’s a combination of using these kinds of pure skincare products and no irritants in the laundry and then you will notice amazing improvement.
We need to go to break. But when we come back, we’ll talk more with Kim Mendes of Yoreganics about natural non-toxic living and her products. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Kim Mendes from Yoreganics and that’s Yoreganics.com. Y-O-R-E-R-G-A-N-I-C…
KIM MENDES: No, it’s just “ganic”, just “ganic.”
DEBRA: ‘Ganics’, yeah. There’s no O in the middle.
KIM MENDES: No “O-R.” Yes.
DEBRA: Oh, ‘Yore’, then ‘ganics’?
KIM MENDES: Yes.
DEBRA: Yes. Okay. I’m sure the listeners will get it by the end of the show. So I just want to read something to listeners just because I look at so many websites and it’s worth it to go to Yoreganics even if you don’t want to buy something. Just go to Yoreganics and wonder around because it’s just such a lovely site.
So here’s a page where it says, “Shining a light,” and it has a picture of a lantern. It says, “Into all of the cracks and crevices of life.” And then, she has a little poem. So here’s the poem.
I am like no one, no one is like me
I’m an apron wearing mama on a journey to “just be”
Redesigning my house with thrifty old finds
Writing about the latest crazy thoughts on my mind
Addicted to taking pix of everything under the sun
Then making green smoothies and being silly just for fun
My life is perfectly imperfect, no time to obsess
More love and laughter, a little less stress!
Every page is like this practically. And it just delights to be on your site.
KIM MENDES: Thank you.
DEBRA: It makes me smile.
KIM MENDES: Thanks, Debra.
DEBRA: And I wish every website is like this. I don’t know how many websites you look at, but some of them are just really boring. They don’t even give you the information you want. You can’t even tell from the homepage what they’re selling.
KIM MENDES: Yeah. Well, everything really for me is a work in progress, but the lighter things feel and the more full of laughter, I feel better. So I am all about laughing first and thinking everything else after that. Yes.
DEBRA: Okay. So what else would you like to talk about? We still have about another 10 minutes left for the show.
KIM MENDES: Oh, goodness. Gosh, it’s just like an open forum here.
DEBRA: It is! I mean, is there anything specifically on your mind that you’d like people to know?
KIM MENDES: On a personal level, my family and I have decided to take a little adventure year, away from traditional scoring. We were part of the beautiful [inaudible 00:41:33] community here in Rhode Island. We moved here four years ago from Chicago. So we’re really digging the East Coast. My husband grew up here, so it’s not new to him. He’s happy to be back.
But just in the journey of everything I’ve been doing (and I’m in the middle of writing a book and paired with pictures because I’m a picture-holic), I just wanted to step back into revisiting the simplicity of life in general and why we’re all here. Sometimes the heavy obligations of all those things we have to do every day just get heavy. So I wanted to bring a different angle for my girls and myself and my husband.
He travels every week to work, but we’re doing an adventure here and just some [inaudible 00:42:29] interest with learning and distant traveling and picture-taking and bringing back the vibrancy of life. Not that it was gone altogether, but we’re just spreading our wings and jumping and flying. And that’s what this here is about.
Even though I have no idea what every minute is going to look like, I’m just trusting in myself and loving that safety. It’s all going to be good and it’s all working out. I’m a big fan of the universal law of attraction, which works constantly anyway whether you’re using it on your side or not. And yeah, I’m just really pumped about that.
So I’ll probably do a little more in the blogging world because I’m not really a blogger. I’m a big Instagram person. I’m not really great on Facebook all the time, but Instagram. I’ll start putting more adventures on the blog, so it can be more about your life, the simplicity of the fun in your life.
DEBRA: Yes. Yes. Well, that’s just really so beautiful. I know exactly what you are talking about, about having so many responsibilities and so much of living the modern technical consumer life that we don’t do those simple things anymore.
As soon as you started talking about those, I thought about the book Walden. Have you read that book? Do you know that book?
KIM MENDES: No.
DEBRA: Oh! You must read Walden by Thoreau, Henry David Thoreau.
KIM MENDES: Yeah.
DEBRA: This was back in the late 1800s. He decided that he was going to not live in – well, at that time in Massachusetts, they were starting to be industrial. So his little town was getting a little too industrial for him. So he moved out into the woods, which was, I don’t know, a mile away and lived by the lake, by the pond, Walden Pond. He decided that he wanted to have just a very simple life. So, he grew vegetables and he built his little house and things like this. It’s just a very lovely book. It kind of has the same sentiment of what you were just talking about.
I am so glad that you mentioned this because for me, being toxic free is so much more than just not having toxic chemicals in the product because it really frees you to have the health to enjoy life in any way that you want to do that. And that’s what it’s really about for me. How can I not be sick all the time from the toxic chemical exposures?
So it’s always the motivation for me of what wonderful things do I want to do in my life and be able to have the health in order to do that.
And that’s really the result of living toxic free, not just having a paint that doesn’t have toxic things in it.
KIM MENDES: Yeah, absolutely.
DEBRA: The products are important because that way, you get to do the things that you need in your life. You get to wash your clothes and paint your walls and things. But the end result is not just to have more consumer products, it’s to actually live life.
KIM MENDES: Right. Yeah. Sometimes some of us can forget. I know I do. I mean, that’s my whole concept on everything. It’s like I have this line of products and when I first started out, I thought, “Oh, the pressure of just having this line of organic products just seemed so heavy.” I felt like I had to be so perfect. And then I’m like on this roller coaster back and forth and whatever is going on in this system. I don’t want someone being like, “I caught you being non-perfect.”
But I realized it’s my own work. So by doing my own work internally, appreciating and loving myself as I am and that we’re all individuals and we’re all doing what we can and what we choose, I’m not here to shine a spotlight on someone else in the middle of the night in the corner sneaking a candy bar, yeah, I like to keep it light. I like to keep it full of love and laughter and as much simplicity as we choose for our family.
And we’re still living in today’s world. We now live in the middle of the woods, which is way cool from – I miss the neighborhood living sometimes, but we’re so surrounded by, “Oh, is that a dog outside? No, that’s a deer. That’s a deer right at my kitchen window.”
DEBRA: That’s right. I used to live out in the woods too. I lived out in the woods by myself for two years and I know it’s wonderful.
KIM MENDES: Yeah, it’s really very cool. I’m a very social person [inaudible 00:47:47]. My girls, with this home school, on-school, we’ll still be social. There are so many stereotypes. I even hate the word “home schooling” in my own little head. I’m calling it adventure year because that’s exactly what I’ve got it set up for. It’s just an adventure, life.
DEBRA: Can I come live with you?
KIM MENDES: Yes, please.
DEBRA: I want to be on your adventures.
KIM MENDES: Please! It might be like walking down to the driveway and eight feet of snow to get the mail, but you are welcome. It is adventure, getting the mail.
DEBRA: Yeah. I’m actually going to go on an adventure this weekend I think down to Fort Myers, Florida to the winter home of Thomas Edison because I just watched this [inaudible 00:48:41] on TV about his life. I didn’t realize how many things he actually invented. More than that electric light bulb, he invented motion pictures and all kinds of electrical things. He had over a thousand patents.
But what really came across was that he changed the world. He changed the world. And what I want to do is I want to change the world from being toxic to being toxic free. So I want to go hang out with Thomas Edison this weekend.
KIM MENDES: How cool is that?
DEBRA: Yeah.
KIM MENDES: Have a blast. That’s amazing. I love learning all those things. Sometimes, when you just have to stare five minutes or five hours or whatever it is to just really have the time to dive into something without all the other stuff that’s going on, let yourself to be in that.
DEBRA: Yeah. Yeah.
KIM MENDES: It’s beautiful.
DEBRA: Thank you so much, Kim for being with me today on the show. Again, her website is Yoreganics, simple, affordable, organic products for laundry and skincare.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
KIM MENDES: Thank you. Thank you so much, Debra.
DEBRA: You’re welcome.
