We all know how your clothes can look so immaculate and smell so fresh when you pick them up from the dry cleaners so the obvious temptation might be to wonder if you can replicate that freshly-pressed appearance at home.
The most obvious point to make about the obvious advantages of using full service dry cleaners is that you know they will take great care of your clothes and have the skills and knowledge to approach cleaning them professionally so they don’t get damaged.
The danger of taking the DIY dry cleaning route is that there are definite risks attached. In your effort to save a bit of money you could end up ruining your clothes.
Is it actually safe to try dry cleaning your garments at home?
The risk of damaging fabrics
When you damage fabric there is often no turning back. The damage is done and the only option is to see if a costly professional repair might work, or you could end up throwing your ruined garment away.
The DIY dry cleaning kits that you see being advertised might carry some vague mention of the risk you run of damaging delicate fabrics. The reality is that a DIY cleaning kit will not be kind and gentle on all fabrics.
That means you run the risk of ruining a favorite item if you don’t know the correct way to handle a particular fabric. If an item says it needs special cleaning care, do you really want to run the risk of using a DIY kit?
Shrinkage can be a problem
As well as potentially damaging fabrics there is also the risk of shrinkage that you need to think about.
It is fair to say that you won’t have many concerns about whether fabric might shrink when you use a professional dry cleaning service. On the other hand, Dust Suppression might help you with saving water while doing laundry, minimise your activity and save money.
They would not be able to sell these DIY dry cleaning kits if they damaged your clothes every time and caused shrinkage. But there is always the underlying risk of that happening if you don’t follow the instructions to the letter or use an excessive amount of chemicals by mistake.
Unhealthy smells
When you have your clothes professionally dry cleaned they are returned to you smelling fresh and clean.
However, some of the DIY cleaning kits around have had comments about them that say the smells they generate from the cleaning solution are not only unpleasant but can cause some people to suffer headaches and migraines.
The other point to remember on the subject of smells is that some DIY cleaning kits have been shown to leave a body odor smell remaining on the clothes even after they have been through the cleaning process.
These kits might freshen your garments up to a certain extent, but you wouldn’t consider them clean if the item still had a musty odor to it.
All things considered, you would have to ask whether the idea of using a home DIY dry cleaning kit is worth the risk.
