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Safely Store Your Clothes for the Season & Protect Your Investment By Dylan Yépez Photos Aaron Leyser
t’s been a long, cold and salty winter here in Cleveland. Your boots and pants hems are probably sporting a nice layer of white around the edges. Your coat has picked up its share from brushing up against the car everyday for the last three months. Before storing your coats and clothes, have London Cleaners pick them up and dry-clean them for the season.
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Alex Shvartshteyn is a third-generation custom tailor, who spent years making and altering garments. Thirty years ago, he decided to channel his thorough understanding of fabrics and clothing into the processes that keep them clean. Alex purchased London Cleaners in 1984 and transformed it into a 100 percent door-todoor dry-cleaning service that can handle any type of clothing and serves Northeast Ohio, from Chardon to Avon Lake and into northern Akron and Medina.
Cleaners, spoke with us about the best methods of cleaning our garments before putting them away for the season. Salt is highly corrosive and can discolor the fabric. Even dust and dirt that is not cleaned out will settle in and can ruin the fabric. Terri explains that some stains deoxidize, similar to after taking a bite out of an apple. You set the apple down and it turns brown. It’s the same process with your clothing pieces which have not been properly cleaned.
Terri, the plant manager at London
Even a little bit of salt left on a garment
Fine Lifestyles Magazine Cleveland
can ruin the fabric’s color. It’s difficult to wash salt out thoroughly with water. Dry cleaning is the only way to safely remove salt without leaving a damaging residue on the fabric. Fabrics stained by sugars or milk-based products can attract moths putting all of your clothing at risk. Perfumes can also cause discoloration if not cleaned out of the fabric and colors can not be put back into our clothes. Another storage nightmare Terri warns us about is using plastic bags or containers to store clothing items. When your drycleaned garments are delivered to your house they should be taken out of the plastic bags.