The Deep Inner Meaning of Dry Cleaning

Does anyone still dry clean their clothes or is dry cleaning obsolete in the age of Zoom and working at home?

This is the Snarky Sunday edition of Snarky Senior — the newsletter from Erica Manfred, which you can read about here. If you like it and don’t want to miss an issue, you can get it in your inbox by subscribing.

Does anyone still dry clean their clothes or is dry cleaning obsolete in the age of Zoom and working at home?   I’ve been in Florida for five years and I’ve never met anyone who patronizes a dry cleaner. I just did a quick Google search and dry cleaners still exist in my area, so people must use them, but I don’t know those people.   Back when I was young dry cleaning was the only way to clean good clothing but it was expensive, and my frugal mom—who came of age during the Depression-- indoctrinated me against it.

I loved the way new clothes looked on the rack at the store--all perfectly pristine and spotless. But whenever I would gaze longingly at a dry-clean-only item, my mother's words resounded in my head:  "Erica that'll get dirty in five minutes--you know how you are with clothes.  I'm not buying you anything that needs to be dry cleaned."

My mother, who never bought retail, firmly believed that dry cleaning was somehow sinful, an unconscionable luxury indulged in only by the rich.  People like us--which included everyone without inherited wealth--washed.  My mother made an occasional foray to the do-it-yourself dry cleaning machine, but everything came out wrinkled and reeked of cleaning fluid for weeks.  Mom, however, often neglected to follow her own advice.  She was always buying things labeled "dry clean only" and then washing them.  She'd say with an air of complete authority, as if she really knew what she was talking about, "I'm sure you can wash this in cold water and Woolite."  

One day she took every sweater I owned, many of them 100% wool, including one she'd bought for me herself in Ireland, and not only put them through the washer, but the dryer.  I still don't understand why she did it.  Revenge for my leaving home perhaps?  After spending days frantically trying to re-block the sweaters by pinning them to my rug, I finally gave them to a needy six-year-old.

Unfortunately mom was right about how I am with clothes.  Food never has a chance to get from my facial area to the napkin on my lap without being waylaid by some outcropping in between.  How do some people get through a whole meal without one food accident I wonder? Is it a talent you're born with, or can it be acquired?

During adolescence I lived in fear of spilling.  I could barely listen to the dinner table conversation, much less talk, so intent was I on lifting fork to mouth in painstaking slow motion.  I knew that a big dollop of grease on my bosom would be a dead giveaway that I wasn't the mysterious, alluring creature I was pretending to be, but merely a slob in mufti.

When I got to college, however, I fell in with a politically correct crowd who thought it was excessively bourgeois to worry about spilling on your fatigues.  I finally stopped worrying and started enjoying my food.  If I came home with mysterious spots which wouldn't come out in the wash, I didn't think it would matter after the revolution.  Plus, I'd inherited mom's self-righteousness about dry cleaning, except I considered it part of the capitalist conspiracy to exploit the workers.   It meant you cared more about how you looked than about stopping the Vietnam War. 

Long after ditching my last pair of fatigues, however, I was still a confirmed machine wash, drip dry, colors-that-won't-show-dirt sort of person.  No matter how much I wanted to buy that mauve silk shirt or white wool suit, I would gaze wistfully and put it back on the rack.  

Dry cleaning might have remained as foreign to me as beluga caviar if I hadn't gotten involved with Tony, a dry cleaner.  With his professional eye, Tony noticed every lurking spot and stain.  He'd sneak into my closets, secretly remove my favorite garments, and show up for our next date carrying hangers full of bright, unstained clothing, with little puffs of tissue paper plumping up the shoulders.  This was a thrilling new experience.   Those stains had been there so long they'd become part of my "look."  It never occurred to me they could actually be removed.

Unfortunately Tony and I eventually parted. After the breakup my clothes reverted to type, but I couldn't.  I became as painfully self-conscious as a teenager again about my stains.  Even though I started crossing my arms a lot to cover them up, tucked a napkin into my neckline even at fancy restaurants, and was liberal with the Spray 'n Wash, it wasn't the same.  I'd been spoiled.  How could I enjoy wearing my favorite lavender sweatshirt when all I could see in the mirror was a big yellow stain on the chest?  There certainly was no way, in good conscience, that I could send a sweatshirt to the cleaners, even though Tony had told me some people are so depraved that they actually dry clean their jeans. I’d been completely brainwashed.  If I actually had to take an item like a wool coat to the dry cleaners, I felt that I’d betrayed my roots, broken my moral code, that I was somehow unclean.             

The solution?  Time and technology.  Just as for so many other everyday problems, someone invented solutions.  It was only a matter of time before my problem was solved.  Just about all fabrics are now machine washable—even rayon. The dreaded “Dry Clean Only” tag seems to have disappeared. As for stains,  Voila!   Stain Stick.  When I spill, which is still often, I use Stain stick liberally, throw the garment in the laundry basket, leave it for a week, then toss in the laundry and magically the stain is gone.  This works with almost all stains. 

 Mom would have been thrilled.  Actually she was a gadget freak and would have been thrilled with all of the amazing inventions we now depend on.    I wish she was still around to share the miracle of Stain Stick.

---

Snarky Senior" is for those of us who qualify for a senior discount, but aren’t content with the crap we can buy with it. Subscribe for an irreverent take on life, culture, media, aging, health, politics and everything else about aging as a rebel—with or without a cause.  Snarky Senior will send you short takes and deeper dives on the humiliations and ironies of aging in America.

 If you know someone who might enjoy some snark in their inbox once or twice a week, forward this newsletter their way. You can subscribe (and link to it) here. You can follow me on Twitter here (Don’t expect much. I hate Twitter), and on Facebook here (I love Facebook. It’s where we older folks hang out). Email me anytime at Askerica@gmail.com. Suggestions and feedback welcome.