Yeah, in the Houston region, for the least expensive options, less than $2 is still possible to find. They’d make up those tight margins on pants and other items. But there’s also more infrastructure and competition to keep prices down. I wouldn’t be surprised if prices were a bit higher, on average, away from the city but not $10 a shirt high.
Also, I know it’s hot around here, but people wearing a buttoned dress shirt are probably also mostly inside with the A/C running full blast. Many of them could probably get away with wearing a shirt 2 or 3 times without it getting noxious, though possibly needing a bit of ironing.
I’m paying (probably too much) for Rinse to pick up and drop off at my house. Rounding up the nickel from $X.95:
Jacket 15
Pants 14
Shirt 6
They have a laundry service (that I don’t use) and a dry cleaning service, but the “dress shirts” sent to dry cleaning do in fact get washed in water. The press irons and removes water.
I’m suit and tie every day and even during the summer I’m getting at least 3 wears out of a shirt (I wear and undershirt) and many more out of the suits. I alternate and let things air out between wears. I buy suit separates because I tend to wear out the pants from thigh chubrub so I wear one pair of pants until it’s wrinkly or smelly, then the other, then send them out with the single jacket for cleaning along with whatever shirts I’ve used.
My last bill was ~$140 after fees and tips. Looks like I should shop around.
I went to college in Troy, New York, which in the nineteenth century was the center of the detachable collar industry. Shirt collars and cuffs were separate from the shirt body so they could be laundered separately. We could revive that concept.
The best shirt I own is a fabulous dress shirt built for a detachable collar. Long tails. Rolled seams. Fine soft light cotton, not quite sheer. I would pay 300-400 for a shirt like that if I could find it. I got it second hand 50 years ago – no idea how old it was when I got it. It would seem insane to sew a collar onto a shirt that good.
I put a shirt on (along with my shoes, hat and glasses) right before I walk out the door, and take it off (along with my shoes, hat and glasses) as soon as I get home. Depending on the weather (ie, sweating) and how often and long I’m out of the house, I can sometimes wear the same shirt all week.
I usually wear my jeans three or four days before washing them.
My first paid job (outside of babysitting) was as ‘counter girl’ at a dry cleaner/laundry. Basically I interacted with customers: accepted the clothes, wrote up tickets, pushed the lots into drawstrings bags. This was a town with an Air Force base – we did a hell of a lot of uniforms. (We also had a seamstress who was aces at sewing all the required patches and such onto exactly the right places. The customer would just hand over new uniforms and baggies of the additions, she knew what and where.)
When there weren’t customers waiting I’d staple numbered tags onto the individual items. annotate our copies of the tickets, and drop them into the appropriate tubs for the actual cleaners/launderers/pressers to deal with. Stuff came back, we sorted it back out so the right things went back to the right customers, and ‘filed’ it into an enormous rack system that filled most of the building. And, of course, we’d retrieve the stuff for the returned customers and collect money. (Do NOT lose your laundry ticket!)
I no longer remember any of the prices, and after decades, it wouldn’t be useful info, but I do understand why women’s blouses cost nearly double men’s shirts. There were a couple of specialized machines that made doing the men’s shirts nearly effortless. Becky (who I thought was ancient, but was probably in her fifties) could pick up a fresh from the washer shirt, whip it onto that sort of heated mechanical dummy looking thing that would sort of expand to ‘fit’ the body size. Zap! the entire body and sleeves of the shirt were insta pressed and now dry and smooth. Then she pulled the shirt off, turned a quarter around, and used the next machine: Zap, zap! Cuffs and collar perfectly pressed. Shove hanger inside the shirt, button the collar button, and onto the ‘finished’ rack it went for someone else to later condom-ize and send off to us counter help.
The entire process took something like 15 seconds per shirt.
Women’s blouses? They were handled one by one, with much more time. They had bows and ties and flounces and ruffles and god knows what else. A huge range of potential materials, a wider range of styles and sizes and just flat out required a whole lot more effort to do. Basically, they got dry cleaned, not laundered. Yes, some women’s blouses were mechanically the same as men’s cotton shirts, but it wasn’t worth our time to sort them out and we changed the higher price regardless. That’s just how it was.
My last cleaners stateside (Alexandria, VA) were $2.75 per men’s shirt laundry, $5.50 dry cleaned. I would normally give every dress shirt two wears before sending it in.
Women’s blouse was $5.95, only dry clean. Yeah, no surprise there.
Stud or collar button one in front and one in rear, is how I’ve seen them.
Back when I had to wear a suit (and, thus, a dress shirt) every work day, I would typically have at least ten dress shirts in my closet, and four to five suits. I regularly used a dry cleaner for the suits, but I only occasionally had them launder my shirt – usually, I’d just wash them myself.
I always wore a plain white undershirt underneath my dress shirts – and still do, on those fairly rare occasions when I wear a dress shirt – but even so, I only wear a dress shirt for one day before it goes into the laundry.
When I wore dress shirts regularly, I had to have at least two work weeks worth because of the turnaround time for the cleaners. And I have noticed that many cleaners advertise the per-shirt price, usually on the front window.
So I am a little surprised that the OP was presented with an unexpected ten-dollar per shirt bill.
I’ve never seen a loose collar, so I have no idea how they are buttoned. The shirt is a white dress shirt and has integral cuffs. It’s not black, so it’s not a standard Anglican black shirt. That’s pretty much all I know about it.
When I was young, they would warn me when I bought a suit that it should be aired between uses, and washed only twice a year. (You need at least a second suit if you are wearing a suit every day).
I used to have five shirts laundered a week and one suit dry cleaned. This was in the 1990s. Cost was $0.75 or $0.99 per shirt and $5 or $6 for the suit.
Now I have 5 shirts laundered a month and 2 pants dry cleaned. The prices are now $4.50/shirt and $11.99 for the pants. Dry cleaning a suit was $19.99 last time I had one done. That’s only once or twice a year now.
Basically I’m paying the same for laundry as I did in 1995, even though my usage is down 80% or more.
I used to own 20-25 dress shirts, most of them white, and 10 suits, most of them grey. Now I own one white shirt, one black suit and one navy suit. Funerals and weddings, more funerals than weddings.
The shirt does in fact have more button / stud holes than just the one at the back of the collar. I know that it was built for a detachable collar because (a), it has no attached collar, and (b) it has a button hole at the back, in a wide seam, suitable for attaching a collar.
I don’t know what kind of detachable collar it was used with, because I’ve never even handled a detachable collar. It’s the wrong color for a clerical color, but the right color for a fancy ruffle. I don’t think it was a business shirt, because it’s too light, and just too good for that.
Back when my husband’s band was a going concern and parts of the uniforms had to be dry cleaned I’d take the lot down and claim it was all men’s attire despite half the band being women for that very reason. The uniforms were “mechanically the same”, and as far as I was concerned if “don’t ask, don’t tell” saved us all a buck that was fantastic.
For the OP - when I have occasionally used drop off laundry, usually when there was an extended family crisis. I only have so much time and energy and out-sourcing my laundry worked well. In that case - laundry, not dry cleaning - they charged by the pound with the exception of things like bedspreads and blankets. Items were returned sorted and folded but not ironed. They would hang if requested. Also would take other requests (I asked them to use my laundry soap because of how sensitive my skin is and provided them the soap) and usually didn’t charge extra for them.
The “we’ll use soap and water, not chemicals” means they’ll launder the item but charge you dry cleaning prices. Is that OK? I dunno - if it’s two shirts they’re running a laundry cycle just for them, and if you’re asking for ironing and hanging the rest of the cost might be justified, for certain definitions of “justified”.
Me, I don’t mind ironing so I just ask for “laundry” when I use such services. At this point I have very few dry cleaning items left.
I wanted my white blouses washed and pressed. I don’t need the rest of my laundry done at all. And I have plenty of time. It’s not so much that I mind ironing, I just don’t do a very good job of it. Professional pressing is different from what I produce with my own iron at home.
In grad school, I wore jeans and a t-shirt (summer) or flannel shirt (winter). I washed everything dried them all together and just folded them and stuck them in a drawer.
When I graduated and got my first job, my income basically tripled. I resolved to dress more like a professional, so I bought slacks and dress shirts and a nice blazer. I took these each week to the cleaners (shirts laundered, light starch and pants dry cleaned). I haven’t looked back since then, though the shirts, slacks, and jackets/suits have become nicer and more expensive.
I just did a little mental math and I probably spend $1500 to $2000 each year on laundry services. This is relatively inexpensive when compared to my income and the value I place on my own time.
I wear dress shirts just one day (if I can detect a faint musk, others can too) and slacks 2-3 days. Jeans, worn evenings and weekends only, last two weeks and polo shirts and t-shirts a couple of days. These all get washed, dried, and stuffed in drawers, no laundering.
Same. And how many times varies a lot, based on weather any my activity level. The shirts that i wear to sit in front of my computer in my air conditioned home might be good for a week. The shirt i wear to go out square dancing will get washed after a few hours of use. Anything i wear for gardening gets washed before i put it on a second time. If i go out for a walk in decent weather, maybe I’ll wear it twice?