As some of my readers know I am interested in finance. So of course when a topic such as dry cleaning comes up I have a great deal of input with numbers and figures.
While talking to my mom I mentioned that my terrific husband was steaming our clothes (sort of like ironing only with a way cooler set up). Anyhow, she said that sometimes I am wrong to just wash my clothing and that really I should dry clean some items more often. So that’s when I get all on the offensive. Here are my calculations: I buy my husband a shirt (usually at T.J maxx or the like for approximately $20/$30 he says that we pay less than $20 I say we pay in between but for this example we’ll take $20 a standard amount per white shirt. He wears between two and three white shirts within a standard week (usually only for Shabbat, but sometimes there is another function). So, I took three as a standard number. So, if I were to take his three white shirts to be dry cleaned for one week I would pay $2.29 per item times 3 items $6.87. That would be for one week. Therefore the three shirts would pay for themselves after being dry cleaned approximately 9 times. That would mean that if I were to dry clean every week three shirts in two months the dry cleaning bill would equal the price of the three shirts, after that it would (naturally) exceed the price.
SO, here is my argument. Why not WASH your shirts with bleach (which is what they do at the dry cleaners too), until they are no longer in wearable condition and then buy a new shirt. Since we of course follow this rule, my husband has been wearing the same $20 shirts for the past two years and we have not replaced any yet. Of course we have bought more shirts, but we have yet to throw any out. So that means not only do I save because I wash them with all the other laundry and not dry clean them I also continue to save because it is not an item that just falls apart. So instead of paying $714.48. on dry cleaning for two years, for three shirts I spent $60 and that was it!
This is not to say that nothing should be dry cleaned. We do dry clean. Just not on a weekly basis!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
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5 comments:
I'm with you on this. When a shirt says washable I wash it. My hubby wears 5-7 of those white shirts in a week and I don't even want to calculate how much that would cost if I sent them out. If you dry them by themselves and grab them straight out of the dryer they don't even need ironing. And your figures also don't include the gas to get back and forth from the cleaner plus the time you spend.
But when you send stuff to the cry cleaners, do you send your white shirts or just other stuff?
Usually the only cloths we dry clean are wool suits, and dresses that I don’t know how to clean.
sure, you can look at it this way, or you how about this--dry cleaners costs about $550 a year ($2/shirt*5 shirts/week*52), and its on a high end of usage. This includes laundry and ironing and takes about 15 minutes/week to drop off and pick up. Or, I could waste about 20 min per wash, plus about another 30 min ironing, and never come up with the same result as the dry cleaner. At the same time, during the extra 30 minutes that i would gain by using dry cleaners, I could read, listen, learn, or respond to your blog. So it all comes down to is $500/year or the stress and aggrivation of wasting my time on activities that never produce adequate results and still cost me money. I pick responding to your blog...
I could argue this point till I’m blue in the face but it all comes down to this: Every family should agree on what their disposable budget is. If it is $5 a week or if it is $200 it should be agreed on that this is what is in the budget. If you view having perfectly creased shirts as a necessity rather than saving about $550 a year (and I believe that is on the low end because usually people dry clean not only shirts but pants as well and tie’s and suit jackets so that amount is quite low considering) then it is worth it to you and your family. In my family we still have to do the laundry weather or not two shirts and two pairs of pants go into dry cleaning or not, because there is other laundry. Therefore the time and resources are already being used and are not “wasted”. Also, in my family we do not think that a perfectly creased shirt is worth any disposable income unless it is absolutely necessary to dry clean that item it is washed, and ironed with all the other laundry that needs to be washed and ironed. The process does not occupy any more time than it would originally. Seeing as how we do not send all of our laundry to be done for us (as I am sure you do not either) this is a moot point of contention.
So, it is all about the budget. If it’s worth it to you then go for it!
In my family we use the disposable income on something that is truly needed…cleaning help.
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