Talk about a dry cleaning veteran! What started out as a job between high school and college in St. Louis has turned into a highly successful (forty-six year and counting) dry cleaning career for Jackie!

Chocolates for every season with Jackie Wilson at Classic Cleaners in Clay Terrace

If you’re into chocolates and dry cleaning history, you’ll want to visit with Jackie Wilson at the Clay Terrace Classic Cleaners store in Carmel, Indiana.

Rising rapidly through the ranks of her St. Louis dry cleaning employer from customer service representative to general manager of 25 stores, Jackie arrived in Indianapolis when her husband was transferred here, immediately continuing her work in dry cleaning production management.  June 19th of this year marked Wilson’s four year anniversary with Classic Cleaners.

Asked about the most notable changes she’s seen at Classic Cleaners and in the industry in general, Jackie mentions computerization as the most significant.  The Classic Cleaners process is continually modernized and automated, in sharp contrast to the manual labeling and invoicing that Wilson recalls from earlier years.

Heat seal labeling allows each garment to be scanned in and tracked, with orders assembled and tickets printed, all through an automated process. At Classic Cleaners, the combination of human and machine is the secret behind the quality.  Each week a quality control random check is performed, and the report is reviewed with production staff. When garments are checked in, every button is unbuttoned in preparation for later pressing.  The pockets on each garment are carefully checked for items that might be damaged or lost – or which might stain the garments themselves. Jackie is particularly proud of the compliments she hears every day about the wonderful job Classic Cleaners is doing on men’s shirts.

Jackie’s home, which she shares with her husband Jim (owner of the Altra I Collision body shop), is just across the way from her Classic Cleaners store in Village Farms. Many of her Village Farms neighbors have become loyal customers and fans.

Looking back over the years, Jackie has noticed changing trends. For one, people don’t keep clothes as long as they used to. In her early career days, she recalls, people owned separate suits and dresses for winter and for summer, and dry cleaners often offered winter storage services. Today it’s more common to find people wearing lightweight fabric blends year-round.

Jackie keeps up with the seasons, though, doing it with chocolates! You can always tell which holiday is soon to arrive by the assortment of chocolates on the counter at her store.  ! If you should ever get chocolate on your clothes, though, ‘fess up, pleads Wilson. Telling the truth to your dry cleaner about stains pays off in terms of successful stain removal!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Classic Cleaners Spnsors the Ice Cream Social

Social? Free? Ice Cream? What’s not to love about that threesome? 

Classic Cleaners, always looking for ways to give back to the Carmel community, is involved again this year as an event and a game prize sponsor at the Village of West Clay’s annual family event.  (Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, for our Ring Toss, and YOU could become the proud owner of a beach ball or Frisbee from Classic Cleaners!)

The annual Village of West Clay Ice Cream Social will be held Sunday June 27th on the Village Green.  If you’ve never been to this event, you’re in for a treat, beginning with the big bike parade.

At Classic Cleaners, we get a kick out of sponsoring events like the Ice Cream Social at the Village of West Clay.  Our work, though, starts when the social ends.  After all, when you combine face painting, cupcakes, ice cream, grass, sweaty kids, and sometimes sweatier parents, what do you get? A lot of stained clothes, that’s what!

Perfect opportunity for you to try our Fluff and Fold laundry service. That way, the only reminders of all the fun – and all the resulting messes – will be baskets of fresh, clean family clothing.  And, if Dad’s gotten a little “hot under the collar” (when Junior beat him at Ring Toss), not to worry.  Classic Cleaners’ professionals will pay special attention to the inside collar of his favorite golf shirt, delivering it crisply pressed on a hanger.  (What’s not to love about that?)

The month of May is a special time for Classic Cleaners customers, with our May special on household items. For the whole month of May, there is a 20% discount on cleaning or laundering of all household items.

From the dining room to the bedroom, our special is designed to help the fabrics of your household “get fresh” again as spring turns into summer.

• Dining and living room:
  table linens
  drapes
  table runners
  needlepoint
  afghans
   
• Bedroom/bath
  Comforters
  Bedspreads
  down pillows
  blankets
  quilts
  bed sheets and pillowcases

Mature readers may remember grandma hanging the family’s sheets and tablecloths out on a clothesline. Provided there were no sudden rain showers, the linens would come off the line with a fresh, spring-like smell.  Of couse, with the closest neighbors a quarter-mile down the road, no one seemed to complain about the “underdrawers” spaced between the sheets. There were disadvantages to line-drying, of course, such as clothespin marks, square linen stretched into rhomboid shapes, and the difficulty of maneuvering large tablecloths on ironing boards.

Today, of course, it’s rare to see clothes and linens hung out to dry.  In fact, in the little town of Perkasia, Pennsylvania, there’s a legal battle going on among those who want to drip dry clothes and linens in the breeze and those who are offended seeing “underwear flapping about”. 

Whatever your thoughts on this matter, let’s face it.  It’s not practical for most apartment residents and homeowners to hang linens out to dry, so most use washing machines and electric dryers. 

This May, though, put Classic Cleaners professionals in the driver’s seat, treating yourself to the luxury of perfectly pressed and folded tableware, crisp, lightly starched sheets and pillow cases, and fluffy, sparkling clean pillows, spreads, and drapes.

This May, let your household items “get fresh” with Classic Cleaners!
 by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Who truly enjoys washing clothes at home? Here’s some good news: You don’t have to do it yourself! Classic Cleaners offers the best laundry service (fluff and fold, family wash) in Indianapolis. Here’s how it works:

• Simply take all of your unwashed clothes and put them in your Classic Cleaners laundry bags (if you don’t have your own Classic Cleaners laundry bags yet, come on in for VIP-level customer service!).
• Put items to be dry-cleaned in separate bags–we’ll take care of those for you too!
• Bring your bags into your favorite Classic Cleaners location.
• Or use our FREE home delivery route to have your laundry picked up–and then dropped off once it’s perfectly clean and fluffy!

You’ll save lots of time and hassle! Try it today–you’ll be amazed by the convenience!

–Matt
The Classic Cleaners Blog Team

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