With your resolution to be mindful of your waist and budget in 2010, altering your clothing is a smart and inexpensive way to reign in expenses and still get good use out of your winter wardrobe.

Do you have a jacket that seems a little dated? Let us take the shoulder pads out, cinch the waist, or replace the buttons for an updated look. Did you discover last year’s winter coat or some fun retro clothing while you were hiding presents or digging out holiday decor? We can breathe new life into musty, dusty, dingy and forgotten pieces.

Do you have leather, fur, or suede that caught a drink spill or did your favorite and fun “pleather” (plastic leather) piece spend a little too much time next to a smoker? Our careful dry cleaning process can clean natural and manufactured materials, removing both stains and odors so you can get more wear out of them.

We are just a phone call away for all your clothing care needs from regular laundering, dry cleaning, clothing preservation or restoration, alterations, and hemming. Our pick-up and delivery system around metro Atlanta offers you fast and convenient service at great prices.

Did your clothing “shrink” this holiday season? We are happy to let them out (and in again!) when you are ready.

Someone cleverly tried to create a “universal” care language using pictures instead of words. The outlined figures look like they were carved on a wall in pre-historic times and remind me that it should be so easy “a caveman could read it,” but I still receive a lot of confusion from our customers regarding these symbols.

I’ve included this chart developed by The Soap and Detergent Association in today’s blog as a reference guide for your laundering needs. Feel free to keep it handy so the next time you have a question about how to treat your garment, you’ll have this “language guide” to help you out.

The symbols I consider to be the most important are the “X” and the “O.” The “X” is there to tell you NOT to treat a garment in a certain way, so anytime you see it drawn through a symbol, please heed it’s warning. The “O” is to indicate “dry clean only,” something that when not followed can end in the destruction of your favorite garment.

The dots inside the wash water indicate which temperature you should wash your garments in. The right temperature is a crucial part of cleaning your clothing while keeping the fabric intact. Hot water can fade your clothes or make them bleed color onto your other garments. Water that is too cold won’t destroy bacteria (like that found on bedding), nor will it do the best job removing stains. When trying to save electricity, many people set their wash water to COLD and wash every load with that setting.

Consider that if cold water won’t remove stains or bacteria as effectively a warm or hot water (with garments that are manufactured to handle the heat), that you may be losing money in other ways, such as shortening the life of your garments and fabrics.

Do you read care instructions when doing laundry? Have you encountered these symbols on your clothing’s labels?

Did I mention I equally love to help people in their holiday preparations?

Occasion-wear with all of its embellishment is outside of what you likely experience with your everyday wardrobes unless you’re spending time on the set of Dancing with the Stars. Manufacturers of holiday wear seem to create flashy pieces with little regard to functionality, and that leaves the garment’s owners in a bind.

Here are a few tips from the Dry Cleaning Station of Atlanta to help you preserve and protect your holiday wear.

When you are shopping for the perfect outfit, ask the retailer to protect your garment when you purchase it. Either keep it on a hanger with a plastic garment bag over it, or have it folded gently in their store box. When you get home, hang your clothing immediately, using padded hangers and clips to preserve the shape of the fabric. Roll sweaters or delicate fabrics that may stretch between layers of tissue paper.

Inspect your clothing. Check for loose buttons or appliques and reinforce them with fabric glue or a needle and thread. Protect your garment’s appliques from snagging other clothing by placing it on the end of your clothes bar with the embellishments facing the wall or covered with a garment bag.

When your shirt or dress shimmers with glitter, it is a good idea to keep it covered until you are ready to wear it. Shake it out over a trash container to remove loose glitter and put it on just before you walk out the door. Wear a coat with a smooth lining over glittery outfits. The smooth lining helps prevent glitter from imbedding itself into the lining of your outerwear and transferring onto clothing you wear in the future.

Finally, let your dry cleaner know about any stains you experience and hang onto those extra buttons or threads that come with your garment. We want to see you get a lot of wear out of your holiday clothes, and you can trust The Dry Cleaning Station to keep them looking their best!

I’m sure if I’m feeling the rush, others must be, too. What could we all do with an extra half-hour or hour each week, and how can we recapture more time for ourselves? How about condensing trips and working smarter?

That’s how the idea for picking up corporate dry cleaning came about. We send one of our staff members over to a professional’s office and he picks up the whole crew’s dry cleaning for the week, and then delivers it back when it is done.

Genius, you say? I know, but go ahead and implement it in your office and take credit for it. We won’t tell anyone.

The process is simple. Just give us a call and let us know how many people in your office would like to cross the “dry cleaning run” off their weekly to-do list. We’ll provide everyone with laundry bags and identification tags and set up a pre-determined pick up and drop off date at the office each week. It’s that easy!

The Dry Cleaning Station in Atlanta is happy to provide courtesy pick up and drop off for all dry cleaning services. It’s a small act that can add up to big savings on commute time, fuel, and cash.

I’d love to hear how much time Corporate Pick-Up saves the people in your office. Add up your co-worker’s dry cleaning commute time and tell us your collective total. And don’t forget that even with free pick up and delivery, our prices are still highly competitive and you can use the monthly coupons found on our website for even more savings!

It’s easy to get started, just stop in, give us a call, or fill out our contact form located at DrycleaningAtlanta.com. How about your office? What other small acts are adding up to big time or money savings in your workplace?

It also signals fall cleaning, which is not generally right up there on anyone’s list of favorites. While you are scrubbing baseboards, changing your air returns, and deep cleaning floors and furniture, I’d urge you not to forget your linens.

Did you know it is important to deep clean your linens before storing them away until next season? Perspiration, dust mites, and dirt can all work to stain and deteriorate your summer bedding while it is in storage.

Instead of risking your fabrics in a residential washing machine which may snag or rip your linens, look to a dry cleaner to gently clean your fabrics and return them to you in appropriate storage condition.

And when you pull out those luxurious winter down comforters and stuffed pillows, please be sure to follow the care instructions carefully so you can add years of life to your linens. Machine washing can shrink your fabrics, cause the filling in your bed covers to clump together, and most concerning, breed mold or mildew if the fiber fill or down is not thoroughly dried.

Dry cleaners are specially equipped to handle those large items that are too big for residential washing machines and dryers. Most home equipment is not designed to handle the sheer volume and weight of a comforter. If you do decide to wash heavy blankets at home, be sure to distribute the load evenly and be close by to stop the washer if the weight of a heavy, wet comforter throws your machine off balance and your machine starts doing the shake, womp, and wiggle across your laundry room floor. Believe me, folks, it’s almost a fool-proof way to ruin a good washing machine.

A tip to fluff your linens between dry cleaning visits is to place them separately in the dryer on a cool setting with a few dryer sheets. Toss a few tennis balls or dryer balls in with a flat comforter to restore their fullness. The action of the balls tossing around in the dryer will “fluff” the comforter while the dryer sheets will freshen it’s smell.

To make fall cleaning a little easier on you this year, I’d like to extend an offer of 20% off any household linens or $10 off your order of $25 or more. We’ll even pick up and drop off directly at your home, saving you two trips and giving you more time to scrub those baseboards or enjoy firing up the hearth.

How often do you change your quilts and comforters? Is it a seasonal change related to the weight of the fabric and degree of warmth your bedding delivers, or do you change your bed covers for aesthetics? We’d love to hear from you!

It never fails. If you escape the dirty doggy paws or baby food spew as you are ready to step out the door, the morning coffee, lunchtime condiments, or evening glass of wine will find you. Most people narrowly escape their day with stain-free clothing! Lucky for you there’s a convenient way to pre-treat stains until you can get your clothes over to the dry cleaners for a thorough fabric recovery!

First, here are those all-important tips for stopping a stain from further damaging your garment.

1. Treat the stain as soon as possible to avoid further damage to your fabric.
2. Test your solution on a hidden area of the garment before treating the stain.
3. Work slowly, check the stain frequently throughout your treatment, and use white towels or cloths behind the stained area to absorb the stain and prevent it from spreading further.
4. For items marked “Dry Clean Only,” blot up as much of the stain as possible with a clean white cloth and bring it to us as soon as possible.
5. Do not use put stained clothing in your clothes dryer or iron it until the stain is completely removed. Doing so can further set the stain.
6. Note to the dry cleaner when the stain occurred, exactly what the stain consists of, and how you’ve treated it thus far.

Stock up on these essentials and for less than the cost of a garment, you should have on hand all the tools essential to pre-treat and preserve your clothing all year long.

Good products to have on hand for everyday stain recovery are:

White Vinegar
Rubbing (Isopropyl) Alcohol
Ammonia
Hydrogen Peroxide
Synthetic Detergent
Enzyme-based Detergent
Dry Cleaning Solvent

Butter, Mayonnaise, Grease, Make-up, Crayon, Wax, Furniture Polish, or Paint
These greasy or oil-based stains respond well to the one thing most households do not have on hand but should: dry cleaning solvent. Blot from the back of the stain onto a clean, white cloth. Follow with vinegar and then hydrogen peroxide for any remaining traces.
Lipstick Generally, dabbing rubbing alcohol (isopropyl) on the backside of a lipstick stain will remove it after several applications. Place the stain facing down on a clean white cloth and work the rubbing alcohol in by dabbing it from the back, starting from the outer corner of the stain and working in toward the center.

Blood Soak a blood-stained garment in cold water for an hour. To remove any remaining visible marks, dab a mixture of water and unseasoned meat tenderizer (which breaks down proteins) onto the stain and rinse.

If the stain still remains, dab ammonia onto the stain. (Do not add bleach to any mixture with ammonia as it can combine to release deadly vapors.)
Chocolate, Milk, Ice Cream, Eggs, Baby Formula, Perspiration or Vomit
After blotting the stain with water, use an enzyme-based detergent (versus a synthetic detergent). Enzyme detergents “eat” the dirt off laundry and generally do so better using room temperature versus hot water.

Coffee, Tea, Wine, Soda, Soy, and Tomato-based stains
These stains respond best to synthetic detergents. Follow this treatment with vinegar, and then hydrogen peroxide if the stain remains.

Can you think of a stain on a favorite outfit that you waited too long to remove or treated using the wrong treatment method? Will you find this guide helpful in responding to future clothing mishaps? We’d love to hear from you!

Yes, there are plenty of signs throughout the house that the family enjoyed a carefree summer. And now if you listen closely you’ll hear a collective sigh from parents across Atlanta after the school bus pulls away from the corner each morning. Their households are settling back into their regular routines, and doors and windows across metro-ATL are opening to experience some of that fresh, cool air that’s been blowing through. Instantly, we are upon that transitional period into fall, and right on it’s coattails: Fall Cleaning.

Upon closer inspection of our homes, many of us realize the toll summertime has taken on our furnishings. The sofa pillows are looking dingy, the curtains have layers of dust in them, and our comforters may look a little worn from grubby little hands or man’s best friend.

There’s not a better time to strip your decorative materials, pile them in a bag, and call The Dry Cleaning Station in Atlanta for easy pick up and delivery.

A careful dry cleaning process will restore your home’s linens to their finest condition. It will remove the build up that works to further dull and deteriorate your fabric surfaces. Beyond helping fabrics look their best, dry cleaning eliminates many of the household allergens and dust mites that contribute to respiratory problems and bed bugs. A bi-annual deep cleaning of household fabrics will not only work to keep your family healthy, but it will also restore the cleanliness to your home by eliminating built up germs, stains, and odors.

I’d like to share with you an industry insider tip: Treat all of your identical fabrics (such as every dining room curtain panel) at the same time and in the same way. This way if any variation of color occurs during the cleaning process, all of your fabrics will turn out looking uniform. The differences in color happens rarely and can be barely perceptible, but you don’t want to find out after the fact on those delicate imported curtain panels that you can’t maintain a uniform appearance when using different cleaning methods or spot treatments on them individually. It’s just the nature of some fabrics to respond to cleaning with a mild darkening or lightening. Check with your dry cleaner about testing a hidden spot if you have a concern over a particular fabric, and clean like-fabrics together to be sure they all come out looking uniform.

Which fabric surfaces in your house show the most signs of wear? Do you have any stories of home-cleaning strategies gone awry? What signals you it’s time to clean your common-area household fabrics? We’d love to hear from you!

Oftentimes, those precious fabrics weaken with age and wear and we treat them with caution and reverence—and a special place in the closet where they are never touched. I would like to encourage you to enjoy those meaningful pieces of your family’s past without worry, after all, these items were made to be used and enjoyed.

“Beau knows clothes” and fragile household fabrics as well, and I knows how to handle those delicate heirlooms to restore their natural coloring and gently remove signs of age. Today you can have them restored without damaging the weak fabrics or unstable dyes in vintage pieces. Years of experience and careful pre-testing ensure that your family heirlooms will return to you in far better condition than you likely ever remember seeing them. I’d like to encourage you to pull them out of their alcoves in the back of your closets and bottom of your drawers and start using them again with confidence. We’ll keep them looking beautiful for your kids to use when you are ready to pass them on to the next generation.

We take pride in carefully inspecting your garments to determine the most effective yet gentle cleaning methods available in the dry cleaning industry today. Here are examples of how we can help:

Past Storage

Do you have a garment that’s been stored in a dry cleaning box from yesteryear? Garments carefully cleaned or preserved in the past may have collected damage over the years. That is because the “plastic window” on the top of old dry cleaning boxes actually accelerates hidden stains, oxidizing and yellowing them over time. Today’s dry cleaning technology can remove much of that staining and restore the bright white and soft cream colors of antique garments. We pay attention to the little details, too, such as carefully removing old buttons prior to storing your garment to avoid future causes of accelerated aging and staining.

Fire or Flood

Fire or flood can bring a devastating shock and loss to a family. Sifting your memories into piles of “salvage” or “dump” takes such an emotional toll! I am so thrilled to see the excitement we bring to people by restoring the treasures they thought they lost.

Most often, it’s the loss of heirloom pieces and irreplaceables that people are saddened by. Water and smoke damage can wreak havoc on clothes and can be very difficult to restore with household laundry cleaning methods, so that’s where we come in.

We’d be happy to help you bring your old fabrics and keepsakes back to life again. So push your reluctance aside and pull out your delicate heirlooms for the whole family to enjoy—afterall, when Grandma painstakingly made that afghan, she probably didn’t want it relegated to a closet in a state of stale preservation! Wouldn’t she want her children and grandchildren to enjoy the comfort and beauty she crafted with loving hands? So do we.

Dry Cleaning Wears out Clothes:
This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Dry cleaning powers beyond surface stains to remove dirt particles that wreak havoc on your clothes over time. The International Fabricare Institute has actually looked deep, deep into this subject and says that the myth is bunk. Okay, they used slightly more technical terms to de-myth the fabrication. In all seriousness, dry cleaning actually works to preserve fabrics, not the other way around. You can take that to the bank—literally, because clothing preservation is more time and cost effective than clothing replacement.

Keep the plastic over your cleaned clothes until you wear them again.
Nope.
We put a thin, recyclable layer of plastic over your clothing to protect it for the transit home; however, the plastic should be removed before you put your garments away. Why? Plastic can trap moisture or create slight condensation from temperature changes, which, no matter how little, can damage your clothing. You can keep the paper shoulder guards on clothing to protect them from dust and fading, but please remove that plastic so your fabrics can breathe.

*I do recommend sliding the plastic back on for travel as it reduces the likelihood your clothing will get dirty in transit and it keeps potential wrinkles at bay.

I can get just about any laundry stain out at home.
Falsity, false, false.
If that were the case, I’d have to quit my day job. At-home methods can be useful when applied properly until you can extend your garment the full laundering treatment available at your dry cleaner’s. But consider this—we’re told to blot (lift) the stain, not rub it. How many people resist that urge and throw a little wrist action into it after a minute of getting nowhere? Now think about pressing, patting, blotting, or rubbing the stain and those hidden stain particles working themselves deep into your fabrics and remaining behind. The offending stain has likely been rubbed into the fabric where it lies in wait to create more harm. How? Some examples are perspiration stains that can actually “eat” through your fabric, and dirt particles that act like an abrasive, actually thinning the threads of your garment as they rub together.

Dry Cleaning is Dry
What a load! (A front load that is!)
We use industrial washers, but instead of water, we use dry cleaning solvents that remove stains and don’t leave water rings on delicates or shrink your favorite clothing items. Garments are inspected, spot treated where necessary, protected (items like button are covered, or delicates are placed in mesh bags), and then cleaned and dried with a protective, temperature controlled stream of air. The machines remove approximately 99.99% of the cleaning solvents and dirt, which is why dry cleaned clothes do not generally contain any smell. It’s more environmentally friendly and since there’s little to no smell, it can’t irritate your senses or compete with your favorite fragrance. Now if you ask me, that just makes perfect scents!

It makes perfect sense then that this fabric has withstood the test of time, for silk is the strongest natural fiber. In terms of garments, strength equates to superb wearability, versatility and comfort. Moisture absorbent for coolness in the summer, it provides warmth in the winter. Designers and seamstresses alike enjoy using silk because it retains its shape, drapes well and can be dyed in an array of deep colors.

Silk is so easy to wear, and with the proper attention, also relatively simple in terms of care. While I previously mentioned that silk is moisture absorbent, care must be taken during these hot summer days. Perspiration is strong, and becomes even more harsh due to the chemicals found in anti-perspirants and deodorants so this kind of moisture must be addressed after each wearing. Like all common stains, perspiration stains need to be treated after each and every wearing to stave off the permanent setting of such a stain. Repeated staining can be terminal to silk as the fibers will get damaged over time. Thus, likewise for a stain other than perspiration, always communicate what the stain is, to the best of your ability. We have many tricks in our trade and solutions to use to attack even the most dastardly of stains. However, I will have the best shot in successfully removing a stain if I don’t have to first start by guessing what it is!

Speaking of which, I enjoyed a recent lunch with some colleagues and friends and we had an amusing and downright lively conversation over a summer staple – the stain of… yes, mustard. Before you knew it, the talk got down to the specifics of even what kind of mustard it was! My mouth watered as my friend sadly recalled a favorite white, eyelet summer blouse that was decimated by a glob of a spicy brown mustard. I would like to add, at this point, she and I didn’t know one and other then – I love a good mustard challenge – whatever the fabric might be!

Also, noteworthy to mention regarding silk and your dressing routine… substances that contain alcohol will damage silk fabrics. Therefore, let your perfumes, aftershaves and hairspray dry before dressing.

Where your dry leaner is really going to show you their worth is with the drying and pressing of your silk garments. So many things can go wrong here! Machine drying can shorten the life and even permanently damage your silk. Friction while tossing in the drum, too intense of a heat and lack of humidity can cause breakage, shrinkage and a dulling of the fabric. The same goes for ironing silk. Too much heat here can also dull, pucker and burn the fabric. Your dry cleaner provides the time, skill and patience to keep your silk clothing looking as luxurious as it should in this final step.

Changing of the seasons or even perhaps a trend? For long-term storage, you should keep silk in a cotton pillowcase or like material which allows for materials to breathe. Definitely avoid plastic which traps moisture and can cause mildew and yellowing. Lastly, as I mentioned in the beginning, silk is a natural fiber so it is a favorite with moths. Store your silk within cedar, or with cedar balls or chips.