Whatever happened to …

… dry-cleaning?

Thanks to Sheila Stewart for the inspiration for this. She recently sent me this story.

Thunder Bay’s only personal dry cleaner remains closed as owner waits for someone to step in and run it

I know that, in our town, there used to be a dry cleaner but it’s gone now. Every now and again when the timing is right, Jaimie and I will see a van with a dry cleaner logo on it headed from town into Windsor. Apparently, you can drop them off but your clothes go for a ride to be cleaned and returned.

Of course, this calls for a song and a picture.

I call this “A thorn between two roses”. In truth, it’s one Rose and an Anne Marie at a Regional Computer Advisory Committee Symposium event at the Lamplighter Inn in London.

And that got me thinking. I still have that sports jacket and tie. The tie was purchased to support the Save The Children foundation.

Students from many years ago would be accustomed to me wearing a sports jacket and wool dress pants to work every day. After all, every male teacher that I had in school dressed that way. That’s just what you did.

The realities of the classroom though take their toll. My room had shag carpeting which made for static electricity every day of winter, I used chalk like crazy and had this really bad habit of leaning against the chalkboard. It was nothing for someone visiting the classroom to see a student smacking me on the back to get rid of the dust. At least, that’s why I thought they were hitting me.

The net result though was that the jacket and pants would have to be dry-cleaned regularly and I swear I kept the local business in operation.

Thankfully, times changed and I replaced the wool pants with Dockers or the like and got comfortable either not wearing the jacket or putting it on the back of my chair when in that classroom.

As I mentioned, I do still have that jacket and another brown one that are reserved for formal occasions like pictures with two good friends or going to celebrations of life.

I did manage to save money once the regular dry cleaning stopped. I suspect I’m not the only one as I think about the garments being shipped to Windsor for cleaning.

I had my wife proofread this and her permission to quote

“dry-cleaning is a thing of the past; none of the people I know would ever buy anything that needs dry-cleaning”

I do remember that she had her wedding gown dry-cleaned and put inside a bag and I’m sure that it’s around here somewhere. I just found out that parts of it are around here. Parts were cut from it for my daughter’s wedding bouquet. Why am I just finding out about this now?

For a Sunday morning, your thoughts?

• do you have garments in your wardrobe that need regular dry-cleaning? Sheila has some cleaning tips and I hope she shares them in a comment
• when you started your teaching career, did you dress like the teachers who taught you?
• there really is something special about picking up dry cleaning as it came back in its own plastic covering. I always wondered why. Do you know?
• did you move away from dry-cleanables? What did you do instead?
• is it safe to smell freshly dry-cleaned clothes or is that an old wife’s tale?
• does your community have a dry-cleaning service? When did you last use it?
• if your community doesn’t have a service, what do you do with your dry-cleanables?
• do you still have your wedding dress?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

If you have an idea for a future post here, please reach out to me like Sheila did.

This is a regular Sunday morning post around here. You can check out all the Whatever Happened To posts here.