Both me and my wife work and we have two kids, so you can imagine there's a lot of work with laundry. Even so we do it all at home because doing it at the cleaners is expensive. Do you used the cleaner or do you wash and iron yourself?
I used to use those home dry cleaning kits as an alternative to the pros. They were okay for slightly dirty shirts and blouses but not jackets or anything that would fade. Once I chanced a jacket in the wash and it faded. I was young but still embarrassed by my actions and swore I would never chance nice clothes for the sake of saving a dollar. These days, I'm cautious with those 'dry clean only' items.
For suits or heavy winter clothes I use the dry cleaners. For everything else, I use my hands and the washing machine Why not save some cash on the things I can do by myself? Sure, there are certain clothing items with the 'dry cleaners only' tag, like jneanz mentioned above, but I avoid buying those - too much hassle.
I'm a rather boring person in terms of my clothing, once I find some brands that I like and hold up well to washing, I stick with them and only buy their stuff. Also, I only wash my clothes in cold water, on the mildest settings so they don't get all shrunken and faded. For example I typically only wear Dillard's store brand, Roudtree & Yorke for my dress shirts, Levi's and Chaps for my jeans, and only Dockers for my dress pants. I will also sometimes use those dryer "dry cleaning" sheets to clean my clothes in between putting them in the laundry machine. However I also get my clothes really cheap, usually on clearance at the end of a given season, so I am only paying like less than $10 (sometimes less than $5) for each item - so I'm not going to spend an arm and a leg on dry cleaning or special cleaning supplies when those cost more than the clothes themselves. I will simply donate them to charity and buy more clothes.
So you basically wash you clothes and you don't iron them tom, I got that right? Giving clothes to charity instead of washing them is a neat solution! @prettycolors, yeah, the heavy stuff need to be done at the cleaners, unless you have a sister-in-law that has a huge washer!
I do it myself. We do sometimes use a dry cleaner for business clothes/suits, but then we just iron them in between uses when possible so we don't have to wash them every time.
I think it is a waste of money to get your clothes cleaned at the cleaners. You can just wash your own clothes and save tons of money by doing so. I only go to the cleaners if it is a very special item that needs attention. Other than that, I do my washing at home.
Yeah, I agree. Unless we do have some formal clothes that require dry-cleaning most of our day to day clothes can be washed at home. The only thing I used the cleaner for was my duvet, but now my sister-in-law does it.
