It's Fashion Friday!: Take Me To Your Cleaner

Washing Machines on the street in Utrecht

           NASA has robots roaming Mars. There are scientists who think they may have found the lost city of Atlantis by using fancy tools to look at the gases underneath the soil in Spain. And even before all of this technology, ancient civilizations figured out how to predict all kinds of things using the stars and planets. So, WHY can’t all of my clothes be washed in the washing machine and tossed in the dryer?

            I don’t feel that these are complicated or out of line requests. Wash, dry. I find that doing laundry has become SUCH a production. I have my gym clothes, EASY. Wash cold, tumble dry low (THANK YOU, Lululemon and other brands who I just don’t care to follow the instructions). And then I generally have one load of wash warm, tumble dry low. And then things start to get complicated. I have all of this stuff that can’t just be cleaned. I have pajamas (!) that can’t go in the dryer. I have undergarments that can’t go in the dryer. I have sweaters that can’t go in the dryer. I have concert attire that can’t go in the dryer. I have all kinds of crap from Anthropologie that can’t go in the dryer – they should change their name to Anthropo-line-dry. Hell, half of it isn't even supposed to go in the washing machine, but I don't have time for HAND WASHING. That stuff tends to sit at the bottom of my hamper until I feel like dealing with hang dry, line dry, tripping over the drying rack (months). PAJAMAS that you can’t dry. That’s just not practical. And of course, I never thought to look at the labels before I got them home. This doesn’t even include all of the things that can’t go in the dryer because I have dribbled food on them and have to wash them multiple times to make sure I’ve gotten the stains out before I stick the garment in the dryer and permanently cook the stain into the clothing.

            THEN there’s the dry cleaning. I have literally had things that didn’t get worn for an entire year because I didn’t want to pay to get them dry-cleaned. WHO can afford dry cleaning? These highway robbers don’t even publish their price lists anywhere online. It’s like $15, at least, to get a dress cleaned. $9 for a women’s shirt. And it costs more to have a women’s dress shirt cleaned than a men’s dress shirt. What’s that all about? You can’t fool them either. I think that’s why men’s and women’s shirts button on the opposite sides, JUST so the dry cleaners know how much to charge. I once had a small silk scarf cleaned. $6!!! And good heavens, we had to have the velvet quilt on my bed dry-cleaned after an unfortunate Dozer-the-cat-accidentally-got-stuck-in-my-room-without-litter-box-and-got-scared-until-shitless incident over the summer. That cost a fortune.

So, you can imagine how much dry-cleaning piles up if I can’t even bring myself to wash things I can’t stick in the dryer. A few months back I got a coupon to Zoots where I could get every item cleaned for $2.50. I really took them to the cleaners with that one. I think I had 50 things cleaned in one lump. It’s also gotten to the point that I just don’t wear the things I know I won’t be able to wash. Since then, I’ve made a pact with myself to try not to buy any more clothing that can’t go in the washing machine. And if it’s something that’s going to be washed a lot, it needs to be dryer friendly too. Supposedly, there is a difference between things that say Dry Clean and “Dry Clean Only.” As in, if there's no "only" it's just a suggestion. I have yet to test it out. I’ve heard that Dryel stuff doesn’t work so great. People wore wool sweaters long before dry-cleaners existed though, so there must be a way around this nonsense.

Built in textured cleaning machine. 

Maybe there’s a way I could employ my cat to help with cleaning. He seems to stay quite shiny, soft, and odorless without ever coming in contact with any kind of soap or running water. It’s like a natural dry-cleaning of sorts. And he has so much down time – I’m watching him sleep as I write this. If I could only train him to just lick all of my clothing clean, it would save me so much effort and money. Since he seems to want to eat pretty much anything and everything, he’d probably be pretty great with those pesky food stains too….