<p>The cleaning lady thread prompted me to ask: what do you guys pay to have your blouses washed and ironed? Or do you do it yourself? I used to wash and iron them once a month while watching tv, but have decided that’s one job I’m tired of doing. Stopped at a dry cleaner yesterday and asked what it would cost to have a blouse washed and ironed and she said $6.95. I seriously barely pay that for my work blouses.</p>
<p>Is there a better place to go? I bet I could have my cleaning lady do it for the $20/hr she charges and come out ahead. So what’s the going rate where you live?</p>
<p>We don’t call them blouses - usually shirts or dress shirts. I wash mine myself - I will iron it if I need to. T-shirts are okay in the office but I usually wear dress shirts in the winter because they are easier to wear a sweater over. I have some shirts that don’t need ironing - they are very light and were custom-made and I just leave them on a hanger in a closet near the water heater and they dry in a few hours.</p>
<p>I used to have a local cleaner do my shirts about 28 years ago - they charged less than a dollar per shirt. I just checked out a local laundry service place and they charge $1.75 per shirt so there’s not much inflation in almost three decades.</p>
<p>The major annoyance with dress shirt services is that they regularly chewed up buttons. I assume that dress shirts are done by machine at these price levels and the buttons bear the brunt of any machine damage.</p>
<p>I assume that the huge difference in price between mens and womens shirts is that the women’s shirts are ironed by hand and mens by machines. A decent mens dress shirt will have spare buttons near the middle bottom for repairs. At some point, I just ironed them myself when I moved to an area where there wasn’t a convenient cleaning service. Ironing shirts after a long day of mental work was actually relaxing.</p>
<p>There is a small difference between men’s and women’s shirts that makes ironing women’s shirts quite a bit more tedious. It has something to do with the differences inthe topography of the chest, and that’s all I will say. I find that buying high quality no iron blouses makes my life much easier. I’d rather spend $100 on a shirt and pay next to nothing to wash it at home, or I can buy a $10 shirt and spend $100 on dry cleaning services for said cheap shirt. I prefer to the former. I also like silk which is a very washable material, and silk shirts can be easily de-wrinkled by steaming.</p>
<p>I’ve never ironed a blouse before but a mens shirt is very easy as the left and right fronts are flat panels. You just lay it out on the ironing board and iron the panel - very straightforward. The tricky parts on a mens shirt are the sleeves and the collar - though they are pretty easy on the triangular part of the ironing board.</p>
<p>You can always try a steamer. It takes about 25% of the time spent in traditional hand ironing. Also a press (large iron basically) takes about 50% less time.
Love my steamer!</p>
<p>Once upon a time, when I first got married, my husband had horrible horrible dress shirts that constantly needed ironing and still looked …icky. I tossed the old shirts, went to my favorite dress shirt factory outlet and bought him all new dress shirts for about $12/each (in 1984). For washing – tossed them in the washer and dryer, hung while still damp and they never needed ironing.</p>
<p>My catty sister in law commented to my MIL that “CNP must be wasting money sending his shirts out. They’ve never looked so good.” </p>
<p>It wasn’t about the laundry – it was about the shopping!</p>
<p>I pay $2.50 for my husband’s shirts at a small family owned cleaners where they do all the laundry/dry cleaning themselves on site. This is in the south. Two years ago in the north east I was paying $1.99 at a similar establishment. I have no idea what women’s shirts would cost at either place.</p>
<p>It would cost me the same for men’s shirts at one of the local chain dry cleaners–</p>
<p>but I could get dry cleaning done for less. Before I finally found this small shop I used two chains which regularly damaged and sometimes destroyed garments. :(</p>
<p>I did some research at the mall by asking SAs at several stores about how they de-wrinkled clothes for display. The SAs swore by their Jiffy steamers. I went ahead and bought one. Love it! Made in the US, if anyone is into buying domestically manufactured items.</p>
<p>I totally agree with cnp: it is all about the fabric. Nordstrom makes fabulous no-iron shirts for guys that are truly no-iron. They travel well, too. The price is $20-30 at Nordstrom Rack.</p>
<p>The Brooks Brothers no-iron cotton shirts are both cotton and no-iron. My son used to love them, back when he dressed for work. These days, he’s a co-owner and he wears t-shirts. Nice t-shirts, but t-shirts.</p>
<p>I get no iron shirts for my son from Joseph Banks. They are wonderful nice heavy cotton, I occasionally have the "opportunity to wash one and I am always amazed at how good they look coming out of the dryer. The type I got are called “Traveler”. Kind of pricey, but they do have good sales.</p>
<p>I figured out that it was less time consuming to just iron H’s shirts than for one of us to take them to and from the cleaners, plus the cost. I do a touch up ironing, not perfection (who sees the corners anyway?)- neither do the cleaners. I have my act down to about 2 1/2 minutes per shirt with steam setting- done every 2 weeks in view of the TV before H retired. I also made sure he had easy care/no iron et shirts, they do look better ironed even if pulled out of the dryer correctly. When I worked I spent similar effort on my tops. </p>
<p>I guess being physicians we weren’t as fussy as some in the corporate world (the ward secretaries and upper management nursing staff wore better/more fashion conscience street clothes than most women physicians I knew). I was surprised when I talked to a lady working in a bank who said she judged her doctor partly on how well dressed he was. Little did she know that many of the best physicians don’t bother with those details and some of the worst did. I like that the co-owner son doesn’t dress up as much.</p>
<p>I think corporate America could do with less attention to superficial appearances and more to actual people under the clothes. Sorry- I just posted about dress boots and was thinking about how horrible high heels are.</p>
<p>My husband does his own laundry…including washing and ironing his own shirts. I do mine too. We do not send these things out to be done. The only things that get “sent out” are the things that are absolutely “dry clean only” (e.g. cashmere top coats).</p>
<p>Wis, dress boots also come with little or no heels. Frankly, I prefer my doctors not to wear a tie - ties are bacterial magnets. :)</p>
<p>I asked my coworkers who always seem to have a few shirts on the hangers in their cars how much they paid - $.99 to $2.99 per shirt. 5 shirts per week, 48 weeks per year (4 weeks of holidays/vacations)… You do the math. I can buy a whole new suit for that money!</p>
<p>$1.60 a shirt here – I take DH’s dress shirts in, but ironed them myself for many years. I do my own and s2’s dress shirts.</p>
<p>I will often throw stuff into the dryer to dewrinkle if I don’t need sharp pleats. Just pull them out and hang the second the dryer is done.</p>
<p>I don’t mind ironing – I do a lot of it with my fabric art/quilting anyway, and I just park the board in front in front of the TV while watching sports or HGTV.</p>
<p>I get my tux shirts dry-cleaned, ruffles are hard to iron and I like heavy starch.</p>
<p>Everything else… washed in the machine and not ironed. I don’t need fancy shirts for work, and most shirts don’t look that bad out of the dryer anyway unless they are 100% cotton.</p>
I find that buying high quality no iron blouses makes my life much easier. I’d rather spend $100 on a shirt and pay next to nothing to wash it at home, or I can buy a $10 shirt and spend $100 on dry cleaning services for said cheap shirt. I prefer to the former. I also like silk which is a very washable material, and silk shirts can be easily de-wrinkled by steaming.</p>
Frankly, I prefer my doctors not to wear a tie - ties are bacterial magnets. :)</p>