Yes. This is why most dry cleaners won't accept bedding. It's considered too high-contact. (If they do accept it, they wash it with something other than TCE)

Source: a college friend of mine, years ago, who worked as a dry cleaner. After talking to her, I've never used one since.

> After talking to her, I've never used one since.

What do we do about our formal wear then?

Don't wash (dryclean) it or at least do it super infrequently.

I find the jacket and pants of a suit don't get very dirty if you just wear them at work, and dry cleaning ruins them anyway. I've gone many months of regular wear, probably more than a year in some cases without washing. You can spot-clean if you spill something on it.

I used to wear cotton long pants (thermals) all year, under the suit pant. Not letting the suit pant touch the skin made it easier to wear it for a very long time (multiple months) before dry-cleaning.

Don't miss those days of mandatory suit-wear.

It was 98% humidity and 70 degrees at 7:30 this morning. I broke into sweat watering plants with athletic clothes on. It’s now 86 degrees and 65% humidity. Spring has only started.

For me it’s not an option. I have to dry clean. It is easier to find alternative materials to cotton for the office but they don’t replace button downs and jeans. They can’t replace a suit, linen is still much too casual.

Well, fingers crossed about the Parkinson's, then!

Liquid CO2 dry cleaning?

Supposedly wool doesn't shrink in cold water on gentle and air-dried.

Yes, this is good and effective. The oils dissolve and you spin dry, rinse in new liquid CO2 and repeat if needed, just like washing clothes. The CO2 is evaporated and back into the tank - the oil remains and is disposed.

https://blancliving.co/pages/liquid-co2-dry-cleaning

That's a great question that is entirely fabric-dependent.

If your formalwear is wool (for example, a tuxedo or blazer) you'd probably want to swap it out for a version of the garment which is made from Superwash wool, which is machine-washable. (Or your choice of alternative fabric.) Creating superwash wool is still a pretty chemically-intensive process, but that might not be forever: https://www.moderndailyknitting.com/community/superwash-part... It should at least cut down on your TCE exposure.

Silk is trickier -- if you wet it, you have to take great care to dry it without overheating it, while at the same time getting it to dry evenly, so you don't get watermarks on the fabric. It's doable, but it's a total PITA. The best strategy here, for me, has been to wash my silk blouses very rarely, and with a great deal of care, and tumble-dry low. I also use the 'vodka trick' I picked up working in the backroom of a theatrical costume company, many years ago -- get a bottle of cheap vodka, pour it into spritz bottle (one with a fine-mist setting -- the kind at beauty stores work great) and turn the garment inside-out; hit the pits, etc. It's safe for silk, fur, and other delicate fabrics.

If you're going to be wearing silk, do it in winter or in air conditioning :)

Fur -- well, you wouldn't have been dry-cleaning fur anyway, right? right?? This is a whole chapter on its own. (The vodka trick works tho)

Finally, there are also lots of wonderful new fibres on the market -- tencel, etc. -- that may be suitable for formalwear.

But putting formalwear aside, the biggest problem I see is down-filled jackets and duvets. I have literally no good ideas here, other than 'wash very rarely and tumble dry low, low low'

Duvets at least you can buy machine washable covers for.

yes! But I've also embarrassed myself more than once by spilling coffee (or, ahem, some other liquid) on my eider-down duvet. Moreover, the properties of a duvet cover that could keep the duvet safe from such insults -- namely, a tight weave, and water resistance -- also make it sweaty at night.

While highly prized, I've decided that eider down is simply not a practical material for either my jackets nor my bedding. There are plenty of suitable alternatives on the market these days, and no geese are harmed in their making.

I confess though that I have yet to bear to throw out either my eider down duvet (or, for that matter, my luscious fur coat, guiltily secreted for special occasions in the back closet). Perhaps I should hold my tongue until I can do as I say.

No geese are harmed in the making of eiderdown either (eiders are ducks and the down is collected from their nests, not from animals.)

...in factory settings. Confinement is a harm.

Yet I say this as a lover of fur and rabbit felt hats

I have silk liner socks for hiking (wool over silk is the best combination for avoiding blisters), they're tumble dry low but that's what we always use anyway--I don't treat them any differently than anything else. (Yes, appearance doesn't matter one bit--nobody's ever going to see them. However, they have no marks despite the fact they obviously get a lot of sweat.)

My wife also has some silk that likewise is done tumble dry low without being an issue.

The sheen of silk is altered by exposure to water, especially hot water, and uneven drying creates watermarks.

"[Silk] may be dry-cleaned but should not be washed with water , as water can alter the sheen and crispness of the silk fibers and cause staining if dried unevenly." Banner, Bernadette. _Make, Sew and Mend_, p15 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57693333-make-sew-and-me...

go casual? (not entirely /s)

Hand wash gently?

Don't dry cleaners launder most things - as in, they use clothes soap not TCE? I'm under the impression that this is what happens when I drop shirts off to be cleaned and pressed

It depends on the fabric/you can ask. I brought in one delicate item to be washed (a cosplay) and they said they'd wash it in cold and not dry clean it.

The whole point of dry cleaning is not to use water.

Now, sure many dry cleaners will offer laundry services, but that isn’t dry cleaning.

Doesn’t really address my question

No, my button up shirts say dry clean only and I drop then off at the dry cleaner to be dry cleaned, not laundered.

They do both, for cotton shirts they will just launder and press it, which is why its frequently $1-$2 a shirt. For many other fabrics they run it through the dry cleaning process, which is why its $5-7 a shirt.