Sno Cones notwithstanding, it was h-o-t at the Summer Festival last month at 146th St. and Gray Road.

Classic Cleaners' Antique ironing board at 146th & Gray Road

Taking a break, I wandered into the Classic Cleaners store to say hello to manager Misty Elliott, and to get a longer look at the little piece of history displayed inside that Bridgewater Classic Cleaners location – an antique wooden ironing board.

Interestingly, ironing boards are a fairly new invention.  The Vikings used heated rocks as “irons”, laying the clothes out on a large, flat piece of whalebone.  But, what we think of as an ironing board was patented in 1858 by W. Vandenburg right here in the United States. The first ironing board similar to the ironing boards common in homes today was patented by Sarah Boone in 1892.

When buying an ironing board for your home, About.com advises that, if you have enough room to store it, the best kind to own is one at least 4 feet long and 12-18 inches wide.

At Classic Cleaners, of course, only the most modern ironing technology is used. The Unipress shirt machine wet-presses each shirt’s torso, sleeves, and collar simultaneously. Ironing touchups by hand follow the automated operation. Even when it comes to table linens, our large professional press allows drying and pressing to happen in a single stage. In fact, most dry cleaners simply cannot provide this kind of finish for table linens.

Ironing is more of an art than a process, though.  Even with the most advanced technology, to get good ironing, you need good people, really skillful ironing technicians who know how to press without leaving the outline of pockets on pants, who know how to finish shirt collars to perfection.  

That’s why many of our Classic Cleaners’ customers have found it most efficient to get on about their busy lives, leaving the ironing to us!

By Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

At Classic Cleaners, we’ve never met a button we didn’t like. On the other hand, we’ve prepared ourselves to deal with some of the special challenges buttons can pose in the course of dry cleaning and laundering your garments.

• We have a special Classic Cleaners button guarantee: Should there be any broken or missing buttons on your laundered shirts, we sew on new ones!
• If one of your garments has very delicate buttons (rhinestone buttons on evening clothes, studs, or beaded buttons, for example), our Classic Cleaners seamstress Ohi Suhre may carefully remove those buttons, then re-attach them after the dry cleaning process is complete.

Did you know that buttons were first used as ornaments rather than for fastening? The earliest known button, dating back 5000 years, was found by archeologists in the Indus Valley.  According to SocyBerty.com, the Greeks took the button a step closer to use as a fastener by creating a loop for it out of strands of thread. Mass production of buttons came about during the industrial revolution, and the rest is button history!

One really fascinating aspect of buttons has to do with the feminist movement. In the course of campaigning for equal rights, women gradually adopted men’s clothing styles. But for some reason (there are different theories about why this is so), women’s clothes have always buttoned to the left, while men’s garments continue to button to the right!Whether you fasten your clothing east to west or the reverse, as a Classic Cleaners’ customer, you may be sure your clothes will be returned to you clean, fresh, and ready to –  button!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

WomansDay.com lists Ten Things Your Dry Cleaner Won’t Tell You.  But, when it comes to do-it-yourself dry cleaning at home, there are almost as many things we at Classic Cleaners feel obligated to share with our customers and blog readers.

There are several products available on the market today that promise to clean clothes at home. including Custom Cleaner (Dial), FreshCare (Clorox), and Dryel (Proctor & Gamble). However, cleaning your clothes in your home dryer is not as good an idea as it first sounds.  Here’s why:

1.  You’re only spot-cleaning. Garments are never totally immersed in solvent.  (That may sound like an advantage, but it’s not.)  Professional dry cleaners immerse clothing in solvent, with computer-calculated mixes of detergent, brighteners, and sizing, all of which restore freshness and cleanliness to the clothes.)

2.  Home dry cleaning never rinses out the spotting solution.

3.  With home cleaning, there’s no way to regulate how much extraction of solution there should be for each fabric.

4.  Home spotting solutions can be effective on many water-soluble stains, but those solutions are not effective for solvent-soluble stains or on combination stains.

5.  Home cleaning doesn’t include professional finishing, such as pressing creases in trousers or steaming ruffles.

6.  Home dryers are rarely temperature-controlled for each type of fabric.

7.  Some stains are invisible.  That means stains that were not treated are going into the heat of the dryer, which can further set the stains!

Now that Classic Cleaners has told you all this information, ask yourself: Are there things you’re not telling your dry cleaner?  A large part of dry cleaning success, says WomansDay.com, depends on customers being honest about stains.

The professionals at Classic Cleaners are proven experts at removing stains.  Honest!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog tream

One of our newest customers called with a question: Could we get A LOT of bubble gum out of her son’s baseball uniform?

Classic Cleaners District Manager Dee Godwin to the rescue!  The result: one very clean baseball uniform, one very happy customer, one very happy young baseball player.

Baseball jersey with bubble gum

Baseball jersey ready for the game - no more bubble gum!

Funny thing, while chewing gum goes all the way back to ancient Greece (Greeks chewed resin from the mastic tree) and Mayans (who chewed the sap of the sapodilla tree), bubble gum itself was discovered by accident in 1928.  Walter Diemer was experimenting with different gum recipes when his mixture began to form bubbles.  Diemer brought some of the gum to a grocery store to test the market, teaching the salespeople how to blow bubbles so that they could, in turn, teach the trick to customers.  All the gum sold in one day, and the rest, as they say, is bubble gum  history!

Each brand of bubble gum has its own unique formula.  But blowing bubbles, as Michael Russell explains in The History of Bubble Gum, has become a tradition with friends and families.

Bubble gum, though, can turn into a problem when it connects with hair or clothing. Ehow.com recommends applying ice directly onto the gum for about 15 minutes, or until the gum is frozen solid.  Sometimes, but not always, that allows the gum to be scraped off clothing or skin. 

             1st Rule of Gum: Watch where you sit . (Don’t you often wish others would watch where they spit?) 

             2nd Rule of Gum:  Scrap the scraping, which can leave marks and even tear fabrics.

For a “home run” in removing unwelcome substances and stains from your clothes, leave the job to the professionals at Classic Cleaners!

Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

It’s our anniversary, but you get a present!

As a thank you to all our loyal Classic Cleaners customers, we’re having a one-week, 50% off sale on golf shirts (in fact, on any knit shirts), beginning on Easter Sunday April 4 and continuing through April 10.

CyberLinksGolf.com reminds golfers to keeping moving every day in order to stay healthy, and recommends eating five small meals each day. 
Our Classic Cleaners team, meanwhile, reminds you to drop off those knit shirts and take advantage of our anniversary special!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

The colors of your clothes and even of your sheets and bath towels can impact how you feel, image consultant Julie Carson says.  “Using a red towel in the morning can give you energy,” she adds, “but wearing red all day can make you excitable.”

At Classic Cleaners we know all about reds being “excitable”.  From a dry cleaning and laundry standpoint, red dyes tend to be less stable, with the color likely to lose vibrancy faster than other colors.  Professional dry cleaners refer to certain textile dyes as “loose”, and red, according to Wikipedia is “the main culprit”. Since we know red clothing has a tendency to “bleed” onto other fabrics, our professional technicians are very careful how those reds are handled. Not only are all red garments cleaned and handled separately from other clothes, the solvent itself is distilled after each use.

It’s no wonder we process a lot of red clothing at each of our Classic Cleaners locations – red continues to be a very popular color, not only for women’s clothing, but for men’s ties and sweaters as well. Famous designer Bill Blass advised, “When in doubt, wear red.” Renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright placed a red square signature tile on each of the homes he built in the 1930’s. The message you send by driving a vehicle that is Vibrant Red, according to http://www.squidoo.com/: Speedy, high energy, dynamic. Have you ever wondered why U.S. presidents seem to prefer red ties? Neatorama cites studies showing that red is most effective at enhancing our attention to detail.

No matter what the color of your clothing, be assured each garment will be given the specialized attention it requires. As longtime members of the Dry Cleaning & Laundry Institute, the premier international association for garment care professionals, we’re proud to “see red” (along with any other color garment you entrust to our care!).

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Recently I cleaned some shirts at Classic Cleaners. I dropped them off at one of Classic Cleaners’ extremely convenient stores in the Indianapolis area. Then, I had Classic Cleaners deliver the shirts FREE to my home, since I’m located in the Classic Cleaners delivery area.

As you can see from this photo, Classic Cleaners’ work was pure perfection! Beautiful white color, cuffs beautifully pressed, and the collar–to me the most important part–crisply and neatly finished.

Classic Cleaners is able to do such a great job on shirts because of processes that reflect the highest standards in the industry. Classic Cleaners has special enzyme-based detergent that allows shirts to get exquisitely clean even in cold water–which is better for the shirts.

Then Classic Cleaners uses a series of stations to finish the shirts part by part. It’s a more time-consuming process that results in extra quality that really makes a difference!

It’s for all these reasons that I think it’s fair to say that Classic Cleaners offers Indy’s best shirt cleaning!

–Matt
The Classic Cleaners Blog Team

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