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Why you’re re-ironing your “laundered and pressed” shirts at home
By: Stu Bloom
The reason you’re re-ironing your shirts at home is quite simple: Your cleaner is delivering a machine pressed laundered shirt or a hand finished laundered shirt. Whereas you should be insisting on a hand ironed laundered shirt.
Most cleaners bang your shirts out on a pressing machine at a rate of 40 to 50 per hour per presser. They call that a “machine pressed laundered shirt”.
Other cleaners take that same machine pressed shirt and crease the sleeves with a hand iron. They call that a “hand finished laundered shirt” or, believe it or not, a “premium hand finished laundered shirt”.
As far as we’re concerned, it doesn’t matter if it’s a “machine pressed laundered shirt” or a “hand finished laundered shirt” or a “premium hand finished laundered shirt”. It’s still bang and hang work.
How can you tell that you’re getting bang and hang work?
Look for
- Wrinkles and ripples on both sides of the collars and cuffs
- Wrinkles and ripples in the pockets, pocket flaps and epaulets
- Wrinkles and ripples in the front and sleeve plackets
- Collars that are not correctly broken at the lower rear (i.e., there is a gap between the lower edge of the collar and the collar/back joining seam)
- Frayed collar points
- Collar stay impressions
- A triangular shaped collar (instead of a perfectly rounded collar)
- Collars and cuffs that are abrading or fraying prematurely
- Puckered side, sleeve and yolk seams
- Puckered joins between the body and sleeves of the shirt
- Puckered joins between the sleeves and cuffs of the shirt
- Wrinkled underarms
- Creased sleeves (often automatically done without the client having been given the option of a rolled sleeve)
- Poor packaging (multiple hangered shirts in a single, thin, narrow poly bag or folded shirts in a thin, narrow poly bag).
So ask for a hand ironed laundered shirt. But be careful: In all probability your cleaner will continue to deliver a machine pressed laundered shirt or a hand finished laundered shirt ($2 to $3) and swear it’s a hand ironed laundered shirt ($8 to $14).
Does your cleaner bait and switch and then pocket the difference?
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Author
Stu Bloom
Stu Bloom is Founder and President of RAVE FabriCARE. RAVE FabriCARE, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, cares for fine garments, household textiles and accessories and serves clients throughout the USA and Canada. Stu is the author of various ebooks on these subjects, all of which are available from www.ravefabricare.com/freestuff. He is an evangelist for true quality cleaning and is a contributor to and editor of True Quality Cleaning, RAVE FabriCARE’s blog. You can find Stu on Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
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