Dry Cleaning

What Happens to Your Clothes When You Give Them to a Dry Cleaner Service?

The dry cleaning process begins when you either order a pick up or drop off your dirty clothes at the office of your local cleaner. Most dry cleaners do not have very large and expensive cleaning equipment on-site and will transport your laundry to a central cleaning facility. Hollywood Dry Cleaners has its own modern and up-to-date facilities in Hollywood.

So what happens when you hand over your clothes to the dry cleaner? There are several steps involved in the process for each item cleaned:

Step 1 involves tagging your clothes with an identification number

Every item is tagged with a unique identification number. These numbers can be assigned either in the form of paper tags that are stapled or pinned to the garment. Or they can be in the form of iron-on strips, some even with a barcode permanently assigned for regular customers. This is done to avoid mixing up your clothes with other clients’ clothes.

Step 2 is about inspection of your clothes

This is done to find out whether you have left any items in your pockets, and to find discover any tears, rips, missing button or to find the hard-to-remove stains. If the inspection reveals loosely attached buttons the dry cleaner might remove or fix them so that they are not lost in the cleaning process.

Step 3 includes pre-retreatment for hard-to-remove stains

If the check in the previous step discovers any permanent stains then they need to be given a special treatments before the cleaning process. If you can provide any information on the origin of the stain it will greatly help the cleaner to treat the stain in the right way.

Step 4 is machine dry cleaning

Your clothes are then loaded into a large drum machine and treated with a water-free chemical solvent. The clothes are gently stirred in the solution which gradually removes the oils and dirt. The solvent is then drained, filtered, and recycled and the clothes are washed in a fresh solvent solution to flush away any remaining soils.

Step 5 is post spotting to see whether some of the stains persist

The chemical solvents used in dry cleaning process are very good at removing oil-based stains. However, there are still certain types of stains that are not so easily treated. This is why in this step all garments are checked carefully one more time to find those type of hard-to-remove stains. These type of stains are treated with steam or water to remove them.

Step 6 and final: finishing the treatment

The final step includes getting the garment ready to wear. This includes steaming or pressing out to straighten the wrinkles, reattaching the detached buttons, or even making some minor repairs to your clothes. Items are then hung or folded to return to you. The dry cleaners usually use plastic bags to transport the clean garments to the customer. It is important, though, to remove the plastic bags ones you get your clothes back, otherwise there is a risk that some moisture will remain inside, which creates a risk of damaging your clothes.

Dry cleaning will help preserve the color and the fit and is particularly recommended when there are hard-to-remove spots. Trust your favorite clothes to us. O’Dry experts know exactly how to treat your item so that it never shrinks or fades.

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