5 Differences Between Laundry & Drycleaning

Want to know if dry cleaning or laundry cleaning is more suitable for you? The number of people who use professional companies to clean their dirty laundry has increased. The professional services save the homemakers time, and also delivers clothes that are cleaned thoroughly and treated with care.

Depending on the dirt and the fabric type, you can dry or wet launder your clothes. The dirty clothes are manually inspected and stained spots are specially treated with chemicals. Professional launderers use modern cleaning equipment that use specific amount of solvents and detergents, for maximum efficiency. The washed clothes are finally pressed and folded.

When you decide to send your garments for cleaning, you should know the basic differences between dry and laundry cleaning.

Basic Differences Between Dry and Laundry Cleaning

1. Dry cleaning process uses a chemical solvent to rinse the garments. It is called 'dry' cleaning because water is not used in the cleaning process. The traditional wet laundering method involves the immersion of your clothes in water.

2. Dry cleaning process is done using the chemical perchloroethylene to remove stains and grease from clothing. Laundry cleaning uses cleaning agents like soaps, detergents or softeners along with water to remove dirt from clothing.

3. The dry cleaned clothes are then loaded in a machine and washed using the process called tumbling. The solvents used in the process are generally removed and recycled. In laundry cleaning, the clothes are tumbled in a machine and the detergent works with water to remove the dirt particles during the agitation process.

4. The garments in the dry cleaning process are dried with the help of dry cleaning machines. In laundry cleaning, water is removed from the garments using the spinning process. After this the clothes are dried in a drier or hung dried.

5. Dry cleaned clothes are steamed or ironed to straighten them. Finally they are ready for delivery. In laundry cleaning clothes are pressed or steamed.

Benefits of Dry Cleaning Process

* Effectively removes grease and tough to remove oil stains.

* Reduces shrinkage and distortion of the fabric.

* Minimizes discoloration and reduces bleeding.

* Originality of the material is maintained.

* Protects texture and increases lifespan of clothes.

* With technology advancements, dry cleaning companies have started to use environmentally- friendly cleaning products that disintegrate easily and less harmful. These solvents do not produce odor and your clothes smell fresher and feel better.

Benefits of Laundry Cleaning

* They do not use harmful chemicals that can be harmful to you and the environment.

* People with sensitive skin may have negative reactions to the chemicals used for dry cleaning process.

* It is much cheaper as the solvent used is water and a detergent or softener, and these give a freshness to your clothes.

* Unlike dry cleaned clothes, laundered clothes are free from chemical odor. Softening agents added give a pleasant smell to your clothes.

* Wet laundering is energy efficient; it consumes 50% less energy than the energy used for dry cleaning.

Before you choose to dry clean or wet clean your clothes, you should know the limitations and benefits of each process, and your garment material. If you are not sure, then get professional advice from laundry cleaning companies. It is wise to use the right process of washing on the right fabric to get the best benefit.

Keeping your clothes Mold/Mildew Free

Mildew can be found on many different surfaces. It is a thin, black, or sometimes white, growth produced by mold. Molds are simple plants belonging to the group known as fungi. Though molds are always present in the air, those that cause mildew need moisture and certain temperatures to grow. They commonly develop in humid summer weather, especially in closed houses.

These molds grow on anything from which they can get enough food. In homes they develop most often on cotton, linen, rayon, silk, wool, leather, wood and paper. Many synthetic fibers resist mildew.

Molds that cause mildew flourish wherever it is damp, warm, poorly lighted and/or where air is not circulated — in cellars, crawl spaces of houses without basements and clothing closets. It can also be found on draperies and rugs in basement recreation rooms, on shower curtains and on damp clothes rolled up for ironing. These molds are also likely to grow in a new house because of moisture in the building materials.

As the molds grow, they cause considerable damage. They leave a musty odor; they discolor fabrics; and sometimes they eat into them until the fabrics rot and fall to pieces. They also discolor leather and paper.

How to Prevent Mildew on fabrics

• keep things clean
• Get rid of dampness
• Dry the air
• Heat things up occasionally
• Get rid of musty odours
• Circulate the air

Make use of special products that keeps your wardrobes, closet and laundry basket fresh and also prevent mildews, some of these products are readily available at Lexie Laundry & Cleaners for purchase at very affordable prices. see photo below

For more info on how to care for your garments, avoid mildew and treat mildew infested garments, rush now to Lexie Laundry & Cleaners @ 120 MCC Road Calabar, opposite Millicent Filling Station

The Price of Your Cloth won't make it last longer

How you care for and launder your clothes dramatically affect the look, shape and longevity of them. There is obviously way more to it than sorting darks and lights and hoping for the best. Many don't  always heed proper cleaning instructions but want to have their expensive last longer than forever.

If you’re noticing fading, soap build-up, shrinkage, wrinkles that won’t iron out, etc. it’s not too late! Rush out now and bring them to us at Lexie Laundry & Cleaners so we get them back to brand new for you. In other news, here are cleaning tips to help your garments last longer and always look brandnew...



1. Wash inside out

Have you ever noticed the inside of your clothing is in better shape than the outside? Turning your clothes inside out to protect from fading and wash wear will keep your pieces in tip top shape. This is especially important for dark denim and pants. You should also be turning any garments with beading, print, or other embellishments inside out to protect them damage in the wash.

2. Protect delicates

Use a mesh laundry bag (or a pillowcase) on hand for hosiery, socks, undergarments and other delicate items. Simply put them into the bag or pillowcase and tie it off and wash as you would with the rest of the laundry. The bag protects the pieces from being roughed up by other clothes. I’ve lost one too many pairs of tights from them getting stretched and tied into knots in a normal load of laundry. This trick has extended the life of many delicate pieces of mine!

3. Button and zip

Take a few minutes to button all buttons and zip up your zippers before you toss them into the wash. This prevents the zippers from snagging other articles of clothing and the buttons from getting loose. This wasn’t as necessary years ago when the only thing that zipped was my jeans but now zippers are decorative and on all kinds of blouses and other clothing making this step pretty crucial these days!

4. Gentle detergent but not too much

Using excessive amounts of detergent while doing laundry is one of the most common mistakes. Pay close attention to what the bottle says and use less than that! Too much soap will leave build-up on your clothes and even stain them. To best care for you clothes choose a detergent that isn’t too harsh. The eco brands work great, you use less and your clothes end up lasting longer since the soap is more gentle.

5. Spread it out

Keep your closet and drawers organized and spaced out neatly. Cramming clothes into drawers or hanging clothes too tight next to each other results in excessive wrinkling and ironing clothes too often can shorten the life of them dramatically. This is a huge one for me, my closet was full of crumpled clothes in drawers and multiple items piled on a hanger. Taking the time to be organized will pay off big in the end though!

6. Delicate cycle for everything

The delicate cycle on a washing machine is designed to gently wash your more delicate pieces like lace and light-weight items, which is great, but you want all your clothes to be preserved and washed gently, not just your delicates.

7. Denim—Wash less (or not at all)

Yes, that’s right, don’t wash your jeans. You might be kind of grossed out at first but you’d be surprised how many people do this! Washing and drying jeans cuts their lifespan in half, and if you’re buying nice jeans this can really add up! The trick is to spot treat any stains and when they are starting to feel dingy you fold them up, put them in a ziploc bag and put them in the freezer for a few days. The low temperatures kill bacteria, remove any stink, and somehow, make them feel freshly clean. 

Do you have any cool idea you have tried out on your garment, please share with us!!!

How Your dressing affects your attitude

  

Dressing with confidence is more than wearing the latest fashion trend, it’s about feeling good about what you’re wearing, looking poised and feeling self-assured in all situations.

Would you believe that something as simple as how you dress could affect your attitude and self-confidence? The truth is, how people dress is related in some way to how they feel. They feel first and dress later. Just think of a time when you didn’t feel well, did you want to pull out all the stops and dress smart? Not likely. You probably pulled on whatever was closest to you and dressed the way you felt – not that well.

If we change the way we dress the way we feel will change. When we are dressed well and look good we automatically feel better. When we feel good we are more likely to feel good inside, have more energy and treat others better.

You can boost your attitude, self-confidence and feel good about what you’re wearing if you:

1. Knowing the occasion
2. Know your audience
3. Know your personal style
4. Know the effects of colour

Know the Occasion

While you are standing in front of your closet give some consideration to the occasion. What you wear will depend on the event. Whether you are going to a business meeting, shopping, to church or to a gala event, what you wear should be tailored to the occasion.

A business setting can be traditional (banking, law etc.) or softly tailored (advertising,public relations, etc). The dress code for traditional business is structured, tailored clothes with straight lines and firm fabrics (suits). For softy tailored business setting, use softer lines, structured blazers and jackets, matched or unmatched tailored pants

Social occasions can include anything from a lunch with a friend to a formal event. To feel comfortable at an informal social event opt for unmatched suits, denim skirts, khaki pants and turtlenecks. Black tie means formal and white tie means ultra formal. At a black tie event men wear tuxedos and women wear cocktail or long dresses.

Know Your Audience

Your audience is the people with whom you come in contact. They can be your clients, boss and colleagues (in business) or your peers (social situations). Dress to fit the image of a person in your role. We don’t expect to see bankers dressed in jeans and a t-shirt; farmers dressed in suits; clean mechanics; or cleaners wearing delicate fabrics. When you are dressed out of your role your competence comes into question.

When you dress to suit your role you feel more confident. For example, if you work in an environment where you create artistic products your audience will expect you to dress a little artistic. If you are dressed conservatively not only will you feel uncomfortable your audience will feel something is astray.

People want to interact with people with whom they feel comfortable or who they feel are like them. That means knowing what is expected in particular roles and dressing to fit that role.

Know Your Personal Style

Your personal style is expressed in everything you do. When it comes to fashion your style is evident in the patterns and texture of fabrics you like to wear as well as your accent pieces such as jewelry, handbags and shoes. When you are aware of your style and feel comfortable with it then you can express yourself with confidence.

Take a moment to decide which one of the four style preferences best suits you - classic, romantic, sporty or dramatic? The classic style has an elegant traditional look and wears timeless garments. The romantic style has a soft feminine look and prefers to wear dresses and skirts rather than pants. The sporty style likes casual comfortable clothes and prefers natural fabrics. The dramatic style is sophisticated, turns heads and likes to wear the latest trends.

You may be thinking, what if my personal style is sporty and I am attending a gala event or my style is dramatic and I am attending a ball game? How can I feel confident, express my style and still fit the occasion? All occasions will not fit our personal style but if we know our style well enough we can make accommodations. The sporty style would feel comfortable at a gala event wearing long, flowing pants, and simple top and low (but elegant) shoes. The dramatic style can feel comfortable at a ball game wearing a leather jacket, a bold print top and angular jewelry.

Know The Effect of Colours

Colour is the magic that brings interest to our world. We are instinctively drawn to certain colours and respond to them with feeling. When used in garments and laid against our skin they produce either positive or negative results. The right colours will make your eyes sparkle and your skin glow; while the wrong colours will make you look tired and your skin drab. This is why it is important to know the colours that look best on you. You can do this yourself by sitting in front of a mirror, placing different colours next to your face and notice which colours make your skin come alive and which ones wash it out.

Colours are divided into two categories –warm and cool. When you discover which colours look best on you and wear them consistently you will notice that you look better, feel better and have more confidence.

Colours produce specific emotions and it affects how you feel and how others respond to you. For example, blue is a soothing, calming colour and red is an exciting, energetic, attention-grabbing colour. Knowing the affects of these colours which would you wear in a potentially argumentative situation?

Knowing the emotional effect of colours and their symbolic links allows us to choose colours that will give us our desired effects.

When you dress with confidence you know you have made the best choices for you and you feel comfortable in any situation. It means feeling attractive and completely you. Our confidence is enhanced when we know that we are dressed appropriately for the situation and our style, we are wearing colours that brighten us on the inside as well as outside and we feel attractive and authentic.

credit: josh, selfgrowth, lexielaundry

Caring For Your Clothes

You may employ a seven-step skincare program to keep your skin glowing or schedule a manicure every eight days to keep your nails pristine, but it’s likely you’re neglecting another key facet of your appearance: your clothes. Though steaming a dress, ironing a shirt, or blotting a visible stain are considered key components of how to care for your clothes, even the most sartorially minded make basic mistakes with their wardrobe washing. Luckily, laundry titan Lexie Laundry & Cleaners is taking the confusion out of treating your favorite garments like a precious Diamond; with research from  Lexie Laundry & Cleaners, Fabric Care just got more interesting.

1. Washing With The Wrong Amount Of Detergent

High efficiency (HE) washing machines are meant to expedite laundry days and utilize less resources to do so. They are not, however, designed to make two loads of clothing spotless with only a teaspoon of detergent. If you’re hoping to remove city grit from your wares, skimping on detergent is simply not the answer. 

2. Treating All Fabrics Equally

An egalitarian mindset may be a commendable way to approach many areas of your life, but clothing care isn’t one of them. In the same way you would (hopefully) separate your white clothes from red, you should also treat cotton differently from silk or wool. 

3. Selecting A Detergent With Harsh Ingredients

You wouldn’t wash your Ferrari with bleach, so why would you attack an comparable wardrobe investment with something equally abrasive? The best detergents are ruthless when it comes to removing oils from your skin and grime from the outside world, but gentle on the fibers that hold your clothing together. Look for a detergent with conditioning ingredients and fiber lubricants — like Tide’s FiberSCIENCE technology — to make sure that that your clothes don’t leave the wash looking worse for wear, or sporting pulled threads and pills. 

4. Allowing Faint Stains To Go Untreated 

You may be lackadaisical when it comes to cooking for yourself every night or hitting the gym as consistently as you wish to, but attending to stains isn’t a time for negligence. Certain food, drinks, or other splattering substances can wreak havoc on garments the longer they sit, so take care of your stains as soon as they happen. 

5. Skipping A Wash Simply Because Your Clothing Looks Clean

Unless you happen to own a microscope or possess the key to a laboratory, your naked eye simply can’t comprehend the cleanliness or grime of an article of clothing. Over the course of an average day, your body may produce sweat to regulate temperature, your skin will create oil for moisture and to create a barrier against external conditions, and you’re exposed to the dirt and soil of the outside world. Much of this potent cocktail is deposited on your clothes even if you can’t spot any aesthetic difference. If you simply place your item back on its shelf or hanger until its next use, all of the contaminants which were deposited have time to slowly saturate the fabric, as with a surface stain, causing the fabric fibers to adopt a darkened tone and weaken. Such untreated grime ultimately produces a “Grey Veil” (dimming of a garment’s color over time due to stains and dirt). Treat your clothing like the financial investment it is, and assume that your garments are in need of care after each wear. 

Images: LoloStock/Fotolia; Giphy

What makes an article of clothing require dry cleaning?

We hear the word "dry-clean" and even use it everyday. The simple fact is that, there is a huge misconception in what dry-cleaning and laundry is in this part of the globe. Not all clothes are meant to be laundered and all clothes are not meant to be dry-cleaned. That is why each cloth comes with a care label to aid the cleaner on how to cater for the cloth. 

Check below to find out what makes a cloth dry-cleanable so you can spot the difference yourself...

1. Fiber type clothing (wool, silk, rayon or specific types of these fibers)
2. Finishes (optical brighteners, certain water soluble dyes)
3. Construction (Built garments likes suite jackets, gowns with multiple fiber and fabric types)
4. Embellishments (special buttons, buckles, sequins, lace etc.)

When should I dry clean my clothes?

That, in and of itself, is a broad question.  First of all let's understand what dry cleaning is.  Dry cleaning is no different than washing and drying your clothes at home with the main exception that the liquid used is not water.  Various solvents are used to clean clothes.  Water is a solvent as it dissolves things like sugars, juices, coffee, etc. with the help of other solvents like soap. Dry cleaning solvent typically dissolves oil based stains.  Some examples are grease from foods and cooking, greases and oils and other items to some degree that might be dissolved by paint turpentine.  Some soaps added to dry cleaning solvent have the ability to suspend some moisture in the solvent helping slightly to remove some water soluble stains.

That being said, you have stains that are a combination of both characteristics and need some extra help to be removed.  This is professionally called spotting and pre-spotting.  A good cleaner will examine every garment prior to going into the dry cleaning machine and either remove certain stains that will not come out in dry cleaning or add certain chemical combinations to help the solvent remove the stain.  That is similar to using Spray and Wash prior to washing your clothes.  After a garment has been dry cleaned there will sometimes be visible stains left that may be removed by further spotting before it goes to the press department or have to be re-cleaned.  There are times when a decision is made that the stain can't come off without damage to the fabric and a tag will be attached to the hanger letting the customer know the cleaner has at least tried and was unable to remove the stain.  Low quality and poorly trained spotters typically use a lot more stain tags than quality cleaners and well trained spotters do.  The old adage of "You get what you pay for" certainly applies to the dry cleaning industry.

Now, when should you dry clean your clothes?  There is no simple answer here.  Ideally, you should wear it once - clean it.  This is what I did with every garment that could be dry cleaned (even typically washed items like jeans and golf shirts) that I wore.  I, fortunately, didn't have to pay for this so economics was not a factor for me.  Clothes do last longer when dry cleaned and typically suffer far less apparent wear and tear signs than clothes that are washed.

   

Wool suits, sweaters, pants, skirts, and like items can safely be worn for 3 or more times with no 'real' effect on the garment.  That is assuming that you are not spilling things on them, coming into  contact with heavily soiled surfaces, or sweating like crazy.  Invisible stains are the 'Trojan horse' of stains on garments.  With age, these type of stains will turn yellow (oxidize) and be very difficult if not impossible to remove.  White wines, soda, soups, perspiration, body oils etc. are examples of invisible stains.  If you spill something on your clothes remember where and what and point it out at the cleaners and make sure it's noted at time of dropoff.  Sheer garments like silks and rayons should generally be worn once and cleaned.  Garments coming into direct contact with your skin (especially the upper body) should be cleaned as soon as possible.  Synthetics can go longer with out cleaning than natural fiber garments.

Never clean 'half' of a suit to save money - especially light colored suits as color shading differences may occur.  The biggest mistake most people are guilty of is wearing a garment a few times, hanging it in the closet, and forgetting about it for 6-9 months or so.  As I mentioned earlier, stains oxidize with age and may never come out once that has happened.  Also, a garment that has something on it that would interest a hungry moth not only endangers that garment in your closet, but every other natural fiber garment in your closet becomes a big time target for tiny little experimental teeth and hungry little larvae once they hatch.

So, summing it up, ideally, wear it once, clean it.  Especially if you have a highly relative investment in the garment.  Economics may dictate, so use your discretion on this.  You can get away longer without cleaning on dark clothing than light clothing color-wise.  Thicker garments, as described earlier can go longer than sheer garments.  Appearance is the defining factor.  A cleaner typically will return a well pressed and (hopefully) well cleaned garment.  Many times in order to wear a garment again one must do some touch up ironing.  Keep in mind that heat will cause stains to set and will speed up the oxidation process.

That is why Lexie Laundry and Cleaners gives inexplicable services and touches to your clothes. Focusing on the tiniest detail during the cleaning process.  We care and that is why we are sharing this quality information