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Alterations: Professional dry cleaners are full-service clothing care
specialists. Alterations are one of the many services they may offer in addition to drycleaning your
clothes.
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Buttons: Dry cleaners repair loose buttons or sew on new ones, if necessary.
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Convenience: All you have to do is drop your clothes off and pick them up. Your
cleaner takes care of the rest. Why waste hours doing laundry and ironing when you get quality and
convenience with drycleaning?
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Drycleaning, the process itself: Drycleaning uses fluids to remove soils and
stains from fabrics. Among the advantages of drycleaning is its ability to dissolve grease and oils in
a way that water cannot.
Natural fibers such as wools and silks dryclean beautifully, but can shrink, distort, and lose color
when washed in water.
Synthetic fibers like polyester also respond well to drycleaning, whereas they can retain oily stains
after washing. drycleaning helps to return garments to a "like-new" condition using precautions to
prevent shrinkage, loss of color, and change of texture or finish.
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Expertise: From fashions and fabrics to stain removal to the latest cleaning
technologies, drycleaners have the expertise to clean your clothes right.
Why do it yourself or settle for a second-rate job from a so-called "home drycleaning kit" when you
could trust it to an expert?
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Finishing: Thanks to special pressing equipment, professional finishing gives
garments a crisp, wrinkle-free, like-new appearance that can't be beat. There are no rumples or creases
out of place. Plus, by taking your clothes to the drycleaner, you don't have to spend your weekend
standing over an ironing board and a hot iron.
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Garment Storage: Have you got too many clothes and too little space? Some
cleaners provide garment storage for out-of-season items. The garments are stored in a vault, which
offers protection from insects, fire, burglary, flood, and mildew damage. Furs used to be the primary
storage item, but today cleaners receive woolens, household items, and other items to store as well.
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Household Textiles: Cleaners don't just clean clothes. Many cleaners also process
household items such as blankets, comforters, decorative pillows, rugs, and even upholstery and
draperies.
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Inspection: Before they return a garment to you, quality cleaners conduct an
inspection to make sure your order has met their own and your expectations. If they spot a problem, the
garment gets sent back to receive further attention. Safeguards like this help ensure that your clothes
will look their best when you come to pick them up.
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Just Right: That's how your clothes will look when you pick them up from your
drycleaner.
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Knowledge of Fabrics and Fashions: You may know what rayon, silk, and cotton are,
but what about angora, faille or seersucker? There are numerous fabrics and fibers that drycleaners
must know about in order to care best for the clothes they receive. Each fabric can respond positively
or negatively depending on the treatment administered.
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Laundry: Dry cleaners also have commercial laundry departments where they process
shirts, cotton pants, and other items. With the convenience and superior level of pressing that comes
with commercial laundry, it won't just be your dryclean-only clothes that look like a million bucks.
Your business casual and casual attire will look their best, too.
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Moths, Safeguards From: Clean clothes are the first step to preventing moth and
other insect damage. Insects can damage clothes either directly or indirectly. Direct damage is caused
by a group of insects feeding directly on a fabric. Indirect damage is caused when insects feed on
spilled food or perspiration on the fabric.
Moths attack the garment directly, especially wool and wool blends. Some cleaners provide mothproofing
as a service. Mothproofing is a chemical treatment given to fabrics that provides protection from
insects without leaving the objectionable odors that mothballs do.
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Neckties: Ties are often made of delicate fabrics (such as silk) and require
special care. Whether you've spilled gravy on your favorite tie or are just looking to spruce it up, a
high-quality dry cleaner is best equipped to clean it.
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Odor Removal: Some cleaners specialize in odor removal and flood and fire
restoration of water- or smoke-damaged items. These cleaners use ozone generators to do an ozone
treatment. The contact between ozone and the odors embedded in the textiles causes oxidation to
reoccur, resulting in the elimination of the odors and the release of oxygen. This is a safe and
effective process.
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Preservation: Many cleaners specialize in the preservation of wedding gowns,
christening gowns, and other family heirlooms. Preservation is a special type of storage that helps
prolong the life of a garment for years and years. Cleaners often say that they aren't just preserving
a customer's garment, they're preserving a memory.
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Quality: This is what cleaners should provide and you should expect from them.
Accept no less.
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Restoration: In addition to preservation, cleaners may specialize in the
restoration of old wedding gowns, heirloom items, and antique textiles. These items often are very
delicate and require great care.
Restoration specialists have the expertise to take in these items, although the level they can restore
them to depends on their condition at the time they are brought in. It is not uncommon, though, for a
cleaner to restore a wedding gown originally worn by a bride-to-be's grandmother well enough that the
bride can wear it in her own wedding.
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Stain Removal: Dry cleaners use complex procedures and special stain removal
chemicals to remove stains. Stains are divided into two major categories: solvent-soluble stains and
water-soluble stains.
Different stains require different treatments, which stain removal technicians
are trained to administer. Why risk a disaster using an over-the-counter "all-purpose" stain removal
product or trying a "home remedy" when you could rely on your drycleaner's expert stain removal
abilities?
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Technology: Dry cleaners are on top of the latest cleaning and fabric
technologies.
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Upholstery: Professional drycleaners aren't just clothes care specialists, they
are textile care specialists. Some cleaners will even come into your home if you'd like to clean the
upholstery of your couch, chairs, and other furniture. These cleaners have special, portable equipment
that allows them to clean upholstery and draperies.
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Value: A good value is what dry cleaners provide their customers through quality
work, excellent customer service, and the extra free time to do the things they'd rather be doing
instead of washing and ironing clothes.
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Wetcleaning: Wetcleaning is a gentle form of cleaning that cleaners may choose to
process sensitive textiles such as wool, silk, rayon, and linen. It gives dry cleaners more flexibility
in processing items that may not withstand a drycleaning process or that have soils that would be
better removed in water.
For example, many items, such as wedding gowns, are often trimmed with plastic beads or sequins that
may dissolve or discolor in drycleaning but generally perform well in wetcleaning.
Items with large water-soluble stains are also more likely to come clean in a wetcleaning process.
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EXtend the Life of Your Garments: Contrary to the belief of some, frequent
cleaning does not damage clothes. Frequent cleaning extends the life of a garment by removing stains
and ground-in dirt and soils that can cause fiber abrasion.
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Yellowing: Frequent cleaning removes stains that, if left untreated, could
oxidize and cause yellowing.
Exposure to heat or the passage of time can cause stains from food, beverages, and other oily
substances to oxidize and turn yellow or brown, much the way a peeled apple turns brown after exposure
to air. Once they become yellow or brown, these stains become much more difficult to remove and often
cannot be removed.
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Zip in and out: That's how long it takes you to drop off and pick up your
drycleaning. Again, convenience is paramount to good drycleaning.