Dry Cleaning

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!