You have probably wondered why some people prefer taking their clothes for dry cleaning services instead of doing the laundry themselves. Some fabrics get damaged when cleaned with water. They fade, stretch, or shrink, destroying the designer’s original, chic look of the cloth. Such clothes are often pricey, and it doesn’t make sense to purchase a coveted design and ruin it during the cleaning.
Most fabric manufacturers put labels on how to take care of the materials, including during laundry. When you leave it in your local laundry service for dry cleaning, a few processes take place. Let us see what happens until your garment gets ready for pick up.
- Drop Off
The first thing is to identify a laundry drop off service near you. You can search online or ask your neighbors, friends, or colleagues where they take theirs for professional cleaning services.
Then, visit the store or request a pick up dry cleaning service. Whichever option you choose, ensure you talk to your provider about any issues that may affect the quality of service before leaving the garment.
For example, your cloth can have a stain in a location that is hard to identify. Let the dry cleaner know about it and if you have tried to remove it. Tell them about the cleaning agents you have used on the stain as well.
- Identification and Tagging
Commercial laundry service providers have many customers to serve. Mistakes and negligence can lead to misallocations and time wastage. After dropping your garments, the service provider uses a form of labeling to mark your clothes with unique codes.
If you are a repeat customer, you are given a permanent code to prevent putting too many labels on one garment.
- Inspection
Your clothes are inspected for wear and tear, missing buttons, stains, and things left in the pockets. This step is important as it helps the dry cleaner know the cloth’s condition. These issues are noted before the process begins to avoid misunderstandings during pick up.
The dry cleaner checks the pockets for any objects that can destroy the cleaning machine or compromise the cleaning process. If valuable items are found in the pockets, the service provider returns them to customers.
- Stain Pre-Treatment
Most dry cleaning service providers fail to deliver because they miss this step. Some stains are stubborn and hard to remove during cleaning.
Before the cleaning begins, the dry cleaner pre-treats the stains with special solutions to loosen them. The service provider uses the information you provided about the stain to determine the best cleaning agent.
The professional may also cover your garment’s buttons if they feel loose or remove them to ensure they do not get damaged during the cleaning process.
- Sorting
The commercial laundry service provider cannot clean one cloth at a time. It can lead to a waste of resources and time. Instead, they clean them in batches to save time and make good returns.
However, your dry cleaner cannot just put clothes in the dry cleaning machine. The cleaning team sorts them according to colors, degree of soiling, and the manufacturer’s instructions about cleaning the fabric.
- Dry Cleaning
The dry cleaner uses a computer-programmed machine for laundry dry cleaning. The clothes do not come into contact with any amount of water. Instead, it uses an eco-friendly dry cleaning solution. After removing excess dirt, the next step is to rinse the clothes.
The cleaning solvent is recycled and used to rinse the cleaned batch of clothes. How? The solvent is drained from the clothes using an extractor, filtered, and recycled to rinse the clothes. Rinsing ensures that any dirt that could have remained in the first round is removed and makes the garment ready for the next stage.
- Post-Spotting
After cleaning, clothes are usually dry or slightly wet, requiring drying with specific temperatures provided by the manufacturer. Sometimes, your dry cleaner can realize that the stain they had pre-treated earlier has not entirely come off.
The cloth is not returned to the machine for another round of cleaning. But a professional dry cleaner employs other techniques to remove the stain. Water, steam, and a special vacuum are some of the effective methods used to clear the stain.
- Finishing
Clothes must be presentable to customers and ready to wear. When there are no more stains, and the garments are spotless, the service provider re-attaches the buttons if they were removed during the pre-treatment stage.
Then, depending on the fabric used, the clothes will go through pressing or steaming to remove creases and create the pleats.
Next, the garments are folded or hanged, ready for pick up. You can have yours delivered through the provider’s drop off laundry service if you like.
Of course, laundry papers cover your clothes to ensure they do not get soiled while in transit. Another reason for using laundry bags is to prevent wrinkling during transportation.
- Inspection and Pick Up
Some service providers have a service laundry app that you can use for ordering services. If you’ve ordered the dry cleaning online, you can track the progress of your clothes’ cleaning. When ready, you can choose to go for a physical pick up or request the provider to drop your laundry at your address.
Upon receiving your clothes, you will be required to sign some documents to confirm you have received them. Consider inspecting the garments to see if they have been cleaned to your expectations, the stains have been removed, the buttons are intact, and no damage has been done to your clothes. Once satisfied, sign the documents and take your clothes.
Do you have clothes that need dry cleaning and have no idea where to find a provider for such services? It’s easy to find one since most businesses have gone online. Try searching for terms such as dry cleaning near me to see a list of providers in your location. Contact the best provider for top-notch dry cleaning service.
Sources:
https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-dry-cleaning-2145885
