The other day when Maya and I were in the middle of our closet organizing frenzy, I found my favorite cashmere sweater that my mother-in-law gave me nearly four years ago. Have I mentioned how much I love cashmere? It drapes perfectly, layers well, and is so warm! I don’t purchase it often though because I don’t particularly like how easily it pills (gets those little bumps) or gets holes. Also, I am not a big fan of day-to-day clothes that have to be dry cleaned, which can get pretty expensive. And since I am still learning how to eat without dropping food all over myself, our dry cleaning bill can be fairly outrageous at times.
InStyle tells me that when cleaning a closet one should never put back anything dirty, ripped, or missing a button. So finding this sweater was really a mixed blessing.
I hung it on my closet door for further contemplation. You are probably wondering what there was to contemplate. Well my choices were A. stop being so cheap and spend the $6 to dry clean it or B. relegate the sweater to my soccer-mom pile (clothes that I deem decent enough to wear in certain circumstances but which may not necessarily be appropriate everywhere). For example, I could easily pull something out of my soccer-mom pile to wear to the park, grocery store, or post office without feeling too embarrassed. And check this out…I have a backup plan all ready for the rare occasion I run into someone I know – I simply point to the stain and say:
“I feel like a total slob…Maya just dropped her ice cream/chocolate/jelly all over my clean sweater!”
Yes I have used that excuse in the past and yes, technically it is a lie. But even if her ice cream didn’t drop on me at that exact moment, it most likely had at some point. So I am not entirely lying, right?
I know what you are thinking but please don’t judge. Kids literally suck the life out of you. So if my child can earn me a free pass here and there? I think I deserve it.
Anyway, back to my sweater. The other day I was at Target, loading my shopping cart full of things I didn’t need and probably would never use when I came across this:
10 garments for the price of 1? The Dryel was pretty reasonably priced at $10, which made their bold faced claim very attractive. Into the cart it went. I remember reading good reviews about Dryel in a mom magazine (Good Housekeeping maybe?) not too long ago so I figured I’d give it a shot. (We’ll address the fact that I read Good Housekeeping at a later time).
This morning I pulled out the sweater again and cringed - it was in pretty bad shape. I wracked my brain trying to think of a way to get rid of the pills and figured, why not try a razor?
35 minutes and an episode of The Unsellables later things were looking up. Pretty genius idea if I do say so myself. A side benefit of using the razor? I had nearly enough cashmere to knit another sweater.
Next I headed to the laundry room to test out the Dryel. The instructions said to use the cleaning pen to remove any stains. I followed the directions but after a few minutes I wasn’t getting anywhere on any of the numerous stains, so I zipped the sweater in the Fabric Protection Bag with a Cleaning Cloth, tossed the entire thing in the dryer to steam, and hoped for the best.
30 minutes later my sweater was much improved:
The stains on the arms weren’t gone but the rest of the sweater looked whiter and brighter. A nice bonus was how fresh the Cleaning Cloth made the sweater smell!
Would I buy Dryel again? Probably not. Call me crazy, but until my clothes are swathed in cancer causing plastic by my unfriendly neighborhood dry cleaner, I just don’t get that clean feeling. After this experience I actually have a new appreciation for his astronomical prices and maybe even a bit of understanding for his often abrupt behavior. His parking situation, well that’s another story.
But don’t worry, I’ll get my money’s worth from the Dryel by using it on Ali’s clothes. Trust me, judging from the pile of dirty shirts on his closet floor anything would be an improvement.
