Lengthy post but informative. It’s a 3 in 1. The overall take away is based on the title of this post, but I’ve included one personal story in this post, and attached another in the link. All very relevant to this post.  Happy Reading 🙂

Cleaning your THRIFTED garments.  Listen people, you don’t have to send your stuff to the cleaners- not all of it anyway.

When I first started thrifting years ago I sent everything to the cleaners. Everything. My cleaner bill would be between $20-$70! Back then it was “ok” because I didn’t thrift often and the cost every now-and-again wasn’t too bad.  As I started thrifting more you can image that $20-$70 adds up, and most importantly thrifting stopped making sense if I had purchased a $5.00 blouse and then turned around and paid $10-$20 just to have it cleaned. I should have just purchased a new shirt. But I just believed that the only way for my thrifted garments to not feel or smell thrifted was to send them off to the pros….yeeeeeaaaah, about that. The “pros” are not always pros at what they do. That’s story # 1. Keep reading.

Once I could no longer afford to send my clothes to the cleaners I took a chance a cleaned them myself.  I took time to read the tags and then researched on cleaning the particular material. Set my washer to the necessary temperature and washed everything on a low gentle cycle. After removing them from the washer I gave them a good shake and pull to straighten out the garment and then hung them to dry. BAM!

Done.

No bill.

Saved money.

I was quite surprised at the condition of my clothes from my own efforts. They were clean. They smelled so much better than when I’d send them off, and they weren’t faded nor had they shrunk.  I quickly became my own dry cleaning service.

There are some things that I just won’t clean: wool coats, sequin items. Things that seem extremely delicate I’ll take them to the cleaners because I don’t have the equipment to keep them from shrinking, or tearing, or burning.

Before I end this article lets digress right here for a moment. I wanna talk about these “Professional Cleaners”.  Shaking my head…

On a thrift hunt I found a: $6.00 Green (favorite color), Nite Line, sequin, short sleeved dress, down in a part of Alabama that I’d never even heard of.  Sent it to the cleaners. As a matter of fact, I sent it to my mom’s cleaners that she’d been going to for yeeeeeeeeears. I was just that careful not to send it to a random spot. Couldn’t wait to pickup the dress. Got to the store. They showed me the dress and it seemed to be in good condition.  Got home (shaking my head). Pulled off the bag. Tried on the dress. Dress still fit fine…..

Stepped into the light like Carol Anne from the Poltergeist in 1982…

There it was! A BIG STEAMED STAINED IRONING BOARD PRINT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY DRESS! The steam had faded that portion of sequins from green to now having silver streaks in them! From the neck to the bottom of the dress you could see where they had laid the dress on the steamer, pressed down, and  let it sit from years-obviously!  Surrounding this steamed iron print were the sequins that were still very shiny and green. Half of my dress was sparkly, and the other hair was dull.

I called them knowing that they would deny or blame it on the dress. There was no hope of recovering my money. I actually didn’t care about getting a refund because the dress was more valuable to me, and they couldn’t replace that.  Straight up devastation.

I went online and looked for the dress. I found it! Not!  Couldn’t find the dress  itself but I looked for the green sequins hoping maybe that I could just resew new sequins on. I looked for a few fashion designers in Atlanta who could take on the project. Everything was a flop. I chalked it up as a loss and hung the dress back in my closet hoping for a miracle.

Well, months later…. a miracle came. Was searching online again for the dress, and there is was (different design), but same color sequin and same designer. The dress cost between $60-$70, but I was so thankful to God that I had come across it. Here was the dilemma. LOL. Yes, there was a dilemma. When I saw the dress I was faced with paying my tithes or recovering my loss. Don’t act!   See, I had just paid all my bills and only my tithes were left in my account. “Looooord, I’m going to pay my tithes, and if this dress is still here when I get paid again I’ll buy it.”

Needless to say, the dress is hanging in my closet. I have NOT sent it to the cleaners because after that I reeeeeally cut back on sending stuff to the cleaners. I will try it myself! before I send it out. That’s story #2. Click here Stripe Me Down