Dry Cleaning: Caring for What You Own
When you’re just starting out with The Fair Play Method, one of the first recommended steps is to sort through the 100 cards with your partner. It’s a beautiful and frightening process because if you’re the default care taker or house manager, you see all that’s been trapped in your mind represented in physical form in front of you. It can be overwhelming and a bit intimidating, especially if you’re the privileged partner who’s just seeing for the first time all that it takes to manage a household. If you’re not currently caring for children, you remove 40 of the care task cards from the start and limit your deck to the remaining 60 tasks. Customizing, or limiting the number of cards in your deck, ensures that you don’t spend time - your most precious asset - problem solving for tasks that aren’t essential to your home. For example, if you rarely dry clean clothing, this may be one task that you set to the side.
It starts with being a savvy consumer.
As a professional organizer and Certified Fair Play Facilitator, I think a lot about time and space. One of A Pleasant Solution’s core values is “simplicity of time, space, and being.” The Dry Cleaning Card is essentially about caring for what you own, and you get to decide if dry cleaning qualifies as a ‘simple’ task for your household.
Think carefully about whether you’d even like to go down the dry cleaning path. These days many fabrics are cold water washable. Advancements in “tech” type fabrics have made clothing less likely to wrinkle, less likely to stain, and less likely to need regular maintenance through the dry cleaning process. Decide first, whether you want to be someone who purchases clothing that needs to be dropped off. If not, this card can be removed from your deck.
Think seasonally, if needed.
There are a few items of clothing I’d recommend dry cleaning on a seasonal basis: winter coats, scarves, and sweaters. When properly cared for, these items can hold up for a number years. I typically drop my coats at the cleaners in early April, as the weather warms, so they’re clean and fresh for future winter months. I drop my sweaters a month or so later and repeat the process with a bulk drop and pick up. Dropping items at the end of the cold season feels like a celebration to me, and it lightens my mental load for the Fall. I’d rather have the task complete rather than think about when it’s going to get cold and get items back in time.
Routine, bi-weekly, professional cleaning requires ownership.
If you or your partner works in a profession requiring regular bi-weekly dry cleaning, assign ownership of this card to one individual. It could be assigned based on who drives by the cleaners most frequently. It could be assigned based on whose clothes require the laundering. Either way, don’t “double-up” on this task. Because it has relatively few steps, be mindful of not having one person drop off and the other person picking up. Doubling efforts will create extra work. You’ll have to communicate, talk about the timing, and pass off the pickup slip. Keep it simple by having one person think through the Dry Cleaning Card start to finish.
Keep it simple by upgrading to priority service.
Many dry cleaners offer drop off and pick up services. If you’re regularly using one particular location, I’d recommend paying for priority service. This is simply outsourcing the time and a fraction of the mental load to the cleaning company. They’re already out driving, making their rounds, and picking up and dropping off. Add your household to the route, and just like trash on garbage day, the owner of this task is down to owning placing the dirty laundry and hangers for recycling out on time. They’re also responsible for bringing the clean laundry in, placing it in the correct closet, and removing the twist ties and plastic film wrap. (Storing clothes in the film is not recommended as it traps the cleaning gasses. This can create an odor and potentially cause fabrics to break down quicker.)
Stick to the process.
In our closet, we have a hamper for items that need to be dry cleaned. Because we dry clean every other month or so, no one in our household expects these items to be turned around quickly. When we wear them, we know they might not be available again to wear for some time. My ironing process is similar. I let a handful or more of dress shirts stack up before I pull out the ironing board. This is our process. Dirty items have a landing/holding place (the dry cleaning hamper). We’ve established a frequency (every 2 months or so). The clean clothes get filed back into our main closet in the dress clothes section. Our process ensures that we care for what we own using the fewest number of minutes.
Consider having a clothes care manager.
Lastly, the person who’s holding the Dry Cleaning Card may as well be responsible for clothes care as a whole. This may mean taking shoes to the cobbler for new soles or a polish. This may include waterproofing boots at the beginning and end of the season. A clothes care manager would be responsible for hemming, alterations, replacing buttons, ironing, etc. Caring for what you own is one way to cut down on impulse shopping and take a more sustainable approach to your clothing habits. Again, keep it simple, and only leave this card in your deck if the task is valued and needed.
Curious to learn a more ‘process-oriented’ approach to laundry and paperwork? Check out Episode 56 of my podcast.
