Going Green With THE DHOBI

Top 5 Tips for Choosing a Dry Cleaner

Choosing a dry cleaner can be as tricky as choosing your wedding dress designer. Nonetheless, a good dry cleaning service is always very important to find. Read on to find out if your dry cleaner ticks all the following checkboxes.

Convenience

You would never want to take an hour-long ride to drop or pick your clothes from the dry cleaner. Make sure the dry cleaning service is located near your home or office. Some dry cleaning services offer extended and weekend hours, drive-through facilities, and pickup and delivery services; move your selected dry cleaner up the rating scale if it offers you such convenient options.

Pricing and lost/damaged garments policies

The ‘lowest price guarantee’ may come with strings attached. Look out for any hidden charges or extra costs on special clothing articles and ask whether they follow a fixed price policy or the listed prices may just be the starting figures.

Choosing a cleaning service with great replacement and compensation policies for lost/damaged garments is always worth every extra penny that it may cost you. Find out whether they replace or refund you the depreciated value of your item as per the International Fabricare Institute’s Fair Claims Guide.

Experience

If a dry cleaning service has been around for a long time, it may be suggestive of its commitment to providing superior quality cleaning services. Be cautious of a dry cleaner that has frequently changed names and ownership. Taking advice from friends and neighbors on how long the facility has been in business can always come in handy.

Specialist Services

Your wedding gown and graduation suit needs extra care! Before taking an article of special clothing to the dry cleaner, make sure whetherthey specialize in that type of clothing. Many dry cleaners offer specialist cleaning services for delicate fabrics in suits, dresses, or bedding; do your research before you decide to hand your clothes over.

Customer care

Despite all the precautionary measures, reminders, and assurances, mistakes do happen. You need a dry cleaner that is willing to make amends or offer compensation if they do accidentally spoil your clothes. The staff should work towards earning your continued business with their dry cleaning service each time you visit.

Dry Cleaning 101- Things You Should Know!

Keeping your wardrobe tidy does not have to keep you worried about dry cleaning bills every time you dress to impress. However, occasionally, it may become necessary to treat your clothes to a professional dry cleaning experience. Read on to enlighten yourself with some tips and facts about the professional cleaning process.

Revealing the Process

The word ‘dry-cleaning’ leads to a misconception that the process of cleaning clothes is completely dry. The truth, however, is that the clothes are soaked, washed, and rinsed using solvents other than water, and therefore, the absence of water term it as ‘dry’. The process is mainly aimed at delicate or special fabrics that cannot endure water-based washing and tumble drying.

Labels are there for a reason

Reminder: ‘dry-clean only’ means dry-cleaning ONLY. Adhering to latest fashion trends, most clothing now contains polyester, silk, nylon and other natural fibers that can be damaged by water. There is no getting around those instructions if you want your Pashmina scarves, silken blouses and woolen cardigans to last longer. With professional dry cleaners, you get what you ask for. Make sure that before you leave your clothes with a dry cleaner, you read the care label and let your dry cleaner know of any special requirements, like no bleaching, or any particular stains.

Storage tips

To optimize your dry cleaning experience, you need to be more vigilant when stacking your freshly dry cleaned clothes in the closet. Make sure to check that all the clothes are perfectly clean before you store them to prevent moth holes. It is essential to take the plastic bags off to ensure that your garments stay free from any moisture to prevent odors and molds from developing. Knitted apparel is best stored folded and laid down to minimize the fold creases.

Be careful about using home remedies and DIY home dry cleaning kits

If you believe that milk will help you get rid of ink stains, and club soda can remove red wine spills, what do you do when those milk and club soda stains are left behind? There are a lot of misconceptions regarding what can be used to remove stains. Your attempt to cut down on your dry cleaning expenses by using home remedies or DIY home dry cleaning kits may cost you your favorite piece of clothing by making the stains more stubborn. These products are never as effective as professional dry cleaning and all they might do to your clothing is to add fragrance to it.

Weigh your choices before investing your time and money into home-based cleaning solutions. Seek The Dhobi’s expert advice on the nature of your clothing and stains and let them serve you and your fabrics with their careful dry cleaning services.

What Kind of Garments or Fabrics Should Be Dry Cleaned?

Among the many things that we procrastinators put off, dropping off clothes to the dry cleaner tops the list. We’d rather gather all the similar colored clothes, shove them in the washer, add the detergent, a tap here and a knob twist there and the clothes are clean, and ruined! Not all clothes are meant to be washed at home; some require extra TLC. So how will you identify clothes that need to be sent for professional dry cleaning? Here are some tips:

‘Dry Clean Only’

 

This is a no-brainer. Most clothes that are required to be dry cleaned by the manufacturer come with a ‘dry clean only’ tag. Now you can’t be lazy enough to flip that label on the collar and look for instructions! 

Consider the Fabric 

 

Regardless of the label, always take silk, velvet, wool, acetate, and taffeta garments to the dry cleaner. Although linen, cotton, polyester, cashmere, nylon and acrylic can be washed at home, it is important to check for colorfastness. You can do this by moistening a cotton swab with a mild detergent and dabbing it gently on a hidden seam of the fabric. If the dye comes off, rush to the dry cleaner!

Embellishments 

 

If the garment has a lot of embellishments, such as beads, buttons, sequins or embroidery, they can get spoiled in the washer with strong detergents. Garments with embellishments or decorative items should always be taken to professional dry cleaners.

Price Tag 

 

If you have spent nearly 100 bucks (or more) over a garment, you should not, by any means, let it near your washer at home. Expensive clothes are meant to be dry cleaned, no questions asked. 

How Often? 

 

For procrastinators like us, and for the convenience of the rest, there are god sent laundry pickup and delivery services! Yes, you read it right! But that doesn’t mean that you send everything from your socks to suits for dry cleaning every other week. 

Although it’s a multi-factorial decision, in general, any type of garment should not be dry cleaned more than once a month. Frequent dry cleaning can spoil the fabric by making it look dull and old. 

Now that you know what kind of fabrics should be dry cleaned, contact The Dhobi (the god gifted dry cleaning service we were talking about) to have your clothes picked up for dry cleaning at a preferred time!

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