Have you noticed your once white shirts growing dingy-er after each trip to the dry cleaner? If so, it’s not the dry cleaning process in general that has that effect on your whites, it’s the dry cleaner – and it’s time to find a new dry cleaner!
White shirts should never come back from the dry cleaner looking “dingy”. When clothes are dry cleaned, the dirt, oil, and grime on the dirty clothes is removed and then becomes suspended in the dry cleaning solvent. Your whites will get dingy if the suspended soil is “re-deposited” onto garments in subsequent loads. This can be compared to taking a bath in water in which others have already bathed. YUCK!
Many higher quality dry cleaners distill or “cook” their solvent to separate the solvent from non-volatile and other impurities and they do this continuously. If you notice your whites are “dingy”, ask your dry cleaner how often they distill their solvent. Chances are, they are not distilling “continuously”.
Why wouldn’t a dry cleaner distill their solvent/fluid often? Well, if a dry cleaner is not charging enough or not making enough money, one way to cut back on costs is not to distill as often. Continually distilling solvent is expensive. Some discount cleaners might be saving money by waiting as long as possible before they distill their solvent. Fresh solvent should be clear and will keep your whites white. Cutting corners by not distilling saves the dry cleaner money but your whites will suffer the consequences and come back dingy – just like the fluid in which they were “cleaned”.
Dry cleaning should never turn your whites dingy if you are using a quality dry cleaner. If your whites are not staying white, bring them to us. The good news is we can often remove the redeposition of soils caused from dirty cleaning fluid on your clothing by cleaning it in our Eco-friendly and fresh dry cleaning fluid.
– S.O.
