I have a bunch of shirts that I don’t wear nearly as often as I’d like because they always need to be ironed, and I hate ironing. I’ve been thinking about looking into outsourcing it. I think at least some dry cleaners do regular laundry in addition to dry cleaning, and I assume they’d iron/press as part of that process. I’m thinking it would be great to just have them do all of my shirts that require ironing.
Has anyone here done that on a regular basis? Are there any major downsides I should be aware of (other than the standard drycleaner issues like the potential that they’ll lose your clothes)? Any other ideas (other than getting off my rear and ironing more often)?
The only downside is the cost. When I’ve done it, it costs about a dollar per shirt. And another disadvantage is the turnaround time, which is almost a week. So you need at least two weeks’ worth of shirts. But the upside is that the laundered shirts look a lot better than the ones I did myself.
I always get my shirts laundered. They come back on a hanger and I always have enough that I can have a full week’s worth in the laundry at any one time.
Check around with cleaners in your area as prices vary. And take a look at the newspaper or the Valupak coupon mailing, as there are often coupons for dry cleaners.
Also, consider whether you want the shirts starched. I did it for a while, but it seemed to weaken the cotton fibers, so that the shirts failed prematurely.
Just one clarification – I’m not talking about dress shirts exclusively (though I do have a bunch of dress shirts). I’m also thinking about having them do random button front casual shirts I have (both long sleeve and short sleeve). Stuff like this: http://bit.ly/3jD6bE (I don’t have that particular shirt; I’m just using it as an example). Is that still reasonable, or are they really only going to want to deal with dress shirts?
It’s perfectly reasonable. They’ll dry clean and press your ratty t-shirts, if you wish, as well. It’s a service you are paying for. If you want creases in your tank tops, you’ll get creases in your tank tops.
While you’re at the cleaners, ask about wash-and-fold service for things like bedsheets.
Back when I could walk from home to work, there was a dry cleaner halfway between, and having someone else wash and fold those fitted sheets was a tiny luxury. Compared to the cost of the coin-fed washer and dryer in the apartment building, and hoping someone else wasn’t doing their laundry!) the wash and fold only cost about a quarter more per set.
Now, the cost difference would be a lot more, but it was really nice to be able to unwrap the bundle and find perfectly folded sheets.
Nitpick: Do the drycleaners actually dry clean cotton dress shirts? I always assumed that they were laundering them (i.e., with water) and not dry cleaning them (with chemicals). I never asked, though. (And note that my current job allows me to wear knit cotton polo shirts which look OK after being machine washed, dried and then hung immediately without pressing.)
Yes, actually. They will dry clean your cotton shirts, if you insist. They’d prefer you not specify, in which case they will will launder and press them. But, however, they will dry clean them (and charge you more) if you like.
That’s right - the cleaners do dry cleaning and laundry both. The shirts will be laundered, starched, and pressed.
Many cleaners also do repairs, light tailoring, rug and leather cleaning, and the like. It is worth asking about any of these things.
Things like hemming trousers are a small job, really, but are very hard to fit into many of our lives and keep getting put off. My cleaners would turn this sort of job around in a day. They restitched a heavy canvas duffel bag that had a split seam - I have been using this bag now for thirteen years since the repair without any problems. And most cleaners are small businesses that are family owned.
While we’re in here: might this be why when I brought some dress shirts to the dry cleaners, they didn’t get out the rings-around-the-collar? I’d have thought that dry cleaning would take care of that with ease, but the shirts looked just as dirty when I recieved them, only pressed. I was not happy with the result, but I had assumed they were dry-cleaned, and that dry-cleaning could do no better.
Should I have been more specific about the results I expected? “Something like: Hey, this is not the usual shirt-washing job – I want this ring-around-the-collar cleaned off if at all possible. If you cannot do so, please tell me now.”?
One minor problem. Your typical dry cleaner/shirt launderer is not going to be as creful with your shirts as you would. With your basic cotton dress shirt, that’s not usually a big problem, but if a button comes off somewhere in the process, it’ll be replaced with whatever button they happen to have on hand. I can’t count the number of shirts I’ve had come back with an almost-but-not-the-same button that was slightly off-line from the rest of the buttons.
I’ve tried this a few times. My results were not encouraging (and I tried at least 3 different cleaners).
In more than one, they had ironed creases into my shirts. This required me ironing them back out. I have to wonder what the point is when that happens. Washing and drying the shirt are dead simple, the pressing is the time consuming part.
In once instance I got back a completely different shirt than what I had brought.
After about 3 or 4 times at a few different places, I finally just gave up.
Our dry cleaner would pick up at the door on Tuesday and have it hanging on our door complete by Thursday night. It was nice when I worked for a place with a business casual dresscode. Further, if you’re in the habit of drycleaning your shirts, not only do you save the time of doing it yourself, they’ll last longer.
Funnily enough, I recently had a conversation about this with my husband and my mother, except the object sent to the cleaners’ wasn’t a set of sheets but a tablecloth. A beautiful, hand-embroidered tablecloth that my sister bought in Vietnam. I admit that it probably costs as much to send the tablecloth to the cleaners twice, or at most three times, as it did for her to buy the dang thing in the first place. I admit this.
But. I only use it a few times a year. And I get to pick it up all neatly pressed and wrapped in neatly creased paper. I love that feeling so much that I find myself wondering if I can justify sending our plain white Ikea tablecloths to the cleaners (so far, nope, not even to myself). And I don’t have to worry about the tablecloth (which, have I mentioned, is beautiful? and hand-embroidered?) being ruined because it’s in the hands of people who do this for a living rather than me or, worse, fella bilong missus flodnak, who is sweet and a great husband and all but whose idea of doing laundry is to cram stuff in, add some detergent and push the button that looks most like “Play”. And our local cleaners’ is owned and operated by a family who give such terrific service that I always leave with a smile on my face. And they’re a small business, run by hard-working immigrants yet, just to complete the stereotype. I like supporting their business and I love having that work done for me. It’s worth the money.
Fella bilong missus flodnak gets it. Mom doesn’t. This is why I married my husband and not my mother (who is also very sweet and a good mom and does laundry much better than my fella).
Anecdote: About fifteen years ago, I was in India on vacation. We were in a hotel in New Delhi during the last few days and I was thinking about how I’d have to wash all my clothes when I returned. I happened to look at the pricesheet for the hotel laundry service, and found that it was ridiculously cheap, in dollar terms. So I sent out everything to be laundered and for a week or so afterward, wore underwear that had been cleaned and ironed. (In the US, the hotel laundry service is usually ridiculously expensive, so that cleaning one shirt might cost five bucks.)
I’ve not had this issue, but they may need to specially treat certain types of dirt or stain? I know that my dry cleaners requested that I inform them of deodorant stains, since they had to treat those stains separately. It may also have been that they weren’t paying attention. I figure you can’t go wrong telling them about individual stains you want gone.
When vacationing at a resort in Jamaica, I was tossing clothes in a pile after wearing them. One day all the clothes disappeared! I thought maybe the resort had a laundry service, but nope, the front desk folks had no idea where my clothes were.
The following day they reappeared, laundered and folded neatly. My room maid had taken them home and laundered them. We had gotten along very well, I was traveling by myself, and she was just being nice.
At the time, one US dollar equaled forty-something Jamaican. The tip I left her was almost enough for her to retire on.