CLASSIC CLEANERS’ DECEMBER SPECIAL

25% OFF TABLE LINENS

Just reading through the list of washing instructions offered on http://www.tableclothdesigns.com/washing/index.htm is enough to make me run for professional help!

For 34 different linen brands listed on the website, including names from Ashford to Wellington, the instructions include 110º water temperature and avoiding detergents with high alkaline levels.  For 37 other brands, with names from Athena to Verona, the wash temperature should be 80º – 100º.  For yet 39 other brands, from Anchors Aweigh to Zebra, water temperature is to be less than 140º, and for certain others, including Dazzle-do, there is a warning not to iron or mangle the cloth.

With Thanksgiving just past and winter holiday celebrations fast approaching, it’s the perfect time to plan your elegant table. That’s why, at Classic Cleaners, the December special is table linens.

As Indianapolis Star “Do-It-Yourself” Shelly Miller Leer comments, “Nothing dresses things up like a white tablecloth and tapered candles…”.Miller suggests using 5 round, colored placemats (also included in the Classic Cleaners special offer for table linens) lined up in the center of your table with spray-painted miniature pumpkins placed on the mats as decoration.

Whether you’re planning white tablecloth with colored napkins and place mats, or favor bright holiday colors in table linens for your party or family meal, you will love the results of Classic Cleaners’ advanced cleaning and pressing process.  We’re very proud of our large professional press, something most dry cleaners do not have.  Even with the best instruction manual, the results would be impossible to replicate at home.

A warning of our own: Don’t wait to bring in tablecloths and napkins that have the inevitable stains from Thanksgiving festivities. This is indeed a case where time is of the essence. At Classic Cleaners we guarantee to remove 100% of stains or the cleaning is free, but that guarantee applies only to fresh stains!

At Classic Cleaners, we want do do our part to ensure each of our customers can set an elegant table for the holidays!

By Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

In recent Classic Cleaners blog posts, we’ve been tracing the history of buttons.  Buttons, however, represent only one of the many varieties of garment fasteners we find on the thousands upon thousands of customer garments we care for at our dry cleaning plant in Indianapolis. 

Hooks, snaps, Velcro, sippers, buckles – you name it, and you know our technicians are pledged to keep those fasteners functioning (protecting our loyal customers from the type of “wardrobe malfunctions” that inspired recent media coverage).

Garment fasteners have a history all their own, no doubt about it:

• Cavemen fashioned straight pins out of thorns to hold together animal hides.
• Greeks and Romans used safety pin-like clasps.
• Snaps appeared in the late 1800′s.
• B.F. Goodrich coined the phrase “zipper”, using a “separable fastener” invented in 1913 for their rubber galoshes.
• Velcro was developed in the 1950′s.

Special tidbits from Wikipedia: The brand name “Velcro” comes from two French words: “velours” and “crochet”. There are two layers: a “hook” side, and a “loop” side.  When the two sides are pressed together, the hooks catch in the loops.  When the layers are separated, the strips make a characteristic” ripping” sound.  (Now, as a Classic cleaners blog reader, you are “in the loop”!)

Whatever form of garment fastener we encounter, at Classic Cleaners, our mission remains the same: ensuring that every Classic Cleaners customer is “well put together”!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Table linen care at Classic Cleaners

If you’re like most families, it’s not an everyday occurrence, dining at home on a table spread with tablecloth and fine cloth napkins, that is.  Still, there’s no denying the fact – nothing adds elegance to a meal like crisp, clean, perfectly pressed table linen. 

And, at Classic Cleaners, we know table linen.  We give linens the old one-two-three :

1.   Our first task is removing stains. We’re so proud of our stain removal process that we guarantee removal of 100% of fresh stains (or the cleaning is free)!
2. Next comes laundering the linen in a special cleaning solution that helps restore the original beauty of the cloth.
3. At Classic Cleaners, drying and pressing happen in a single stage, which is possible only because of our large, professional press. Try as you might, it’s impossible to duplicate our process at home.  In fact, most dry cleaners cannot provide this kind of finish for table linens.

Two important reminders for you:

• Linens are breathers, too! Avoid storing clean table linens in plastic bags. (Tip: Clean pillowcases make great storage bags for fine linens.)
• It’s important to bring in all the pieces of a matching set to be cleaned at the same time.  Even if only seven of the dozen matching napkins were used, it’s best to bring in the entire set. As yourvalet.com points out, the same advice  holds true for matching sets of drapes and seat covers, sets of bedspreads, pillow shams, and drapes, and the top and bottom halves of suits. 
  

With Classic Cleaners’ professional expertise, you can be sure the color will be a perfect match! 

 by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team

Yellowing is a big dry cleaning challenge, no doubt about it.  And I don’t mean just a yellow spot, but when an entire section of a garment or even the entire thing, has turned from white to a sickly shade of yellow.

To be sure, Classic Cleaners’ professionals have been able to chalk up some major successes in the battle against yellowing.  Blog readers may recall Regina Mattson’s wedding blanket, the pair of lace wedding shoes, and Brooke Hynds Mackin’s 62-year old, third generation wedding gown.

According to fibre2fashion.com, “yellowing of textile fabrics is one of the oldest and most widespread quality problems known.”…”As a general statement, yellowing…is an indication of unintended chemical degradation.” Fibre2fashion lists several factors that can cause fabrics to yellow:

• Exposure to excessive heat and light (sunlight or fluorescent light)
•  Chemical additives in softeners or brightening agents
• Contaminants from boxes or bags (we wrote about the importance of acid-free containers just the other day)
• Perfumes and body lotions
• High humidity

Some of the time, in fact most times, our experienced technicians have won the battle against yellowing on garments and linens. There have been times, though, when garment are just too far gone for us to restore. (Almost always, though, when you bring in a garment for a consultation, we can predict how well it’s likely to turn out.) 

From a treasured garment’s point of view, it’s just not easy being yellow!

by Reb of the Classic Cleaners blog team