We’re Dry Cleaners. Here’s What We Would Never Do With Our Laundry

Everything hasgotten more expensive, and ourmoney just doesn’t go as far as it used to. This means many of us are inclined to cut back and curtail our monthly expenditures — and an easy luxury for many of us to cut back on is dry cleaning.

Do you really need to take your clothes to a professional? Couldn’t you effectively (and much more economically) clean your garments at home?

The answer is yes, maybe, but with a few caveats, and as long as you don’t submit your favorite silk dress or that fancy pair of pants you bought for more than half its retail price at Century 21 or Saks Off Fifth to some of the most common — and destructive — faux pas that people make when attempting to clean their own clothes.

We talked to two dry cleaners about the mistakes they would never make with their beloved laundry and what they really wish the rest of us would stop doing.

Never rub club soda into a stain.

You know when you’re out to dinner or lunch, and you spill olive oil or some kind of red sauce on your clothes, and you ask the waiter for some club soda? And as you rub it into the spot and it disappears, you think, ‘Oh cool, I just got that out.’”

Don’t do that, saysMichael Jackson, franchise consultant at CD One Price Cleaners, a dry cleaning chain in the Midwest.

“What people fail to realize,” he said, “is that club soda is full of sugar, so it oxidizes.” When you clean with club soda, it pulls color from the fabric because of oxidation. Then, when you take the garment to the dry cleaner, the machine removes the color from the oxidized sugar, making the stain reappear — even though it was never actually gone.

“What happened is that sugar oxidized over the stain. That’s why it disappeared,” Jackson explained.

Furthermore, don’t