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Why would anyone dry clean a tee shirt?

Isn’t that overkill? And it’s awfully expensive. If you have money to burn, you could do it. Dry cleaning is effective and your favorite tee shirt will shrink a little less. Plus, your fancy heat transfer graphics will fade less. And if your tee shirts have grungy yellow underarm stains, dry cleaning may be the remedy. You’ll wonder where the yellow went.

Here’s how dry cleaning works. Instead of washing in water, dry cleaning is washing in solvent. Some of these solvents, such as perchloroethylene, are nasty and are believed by some to be carcinogens. And since these solvents are petrochemicals, this cleaning method is not very green.

An alternative to dry cleaning is hand washing. After wringing out the excess water, air dry your tee shirts until they are damp. Then fluff dry the shirt on low in the dryer.

Is that too much work? For all of you millionaires out there, go ahead, have your tee shirts dry cleaned. Just don’t be surprised if your dry cleaner throws your tee shirts in a washing machine. That’s one of those dirty little secrets about the dry cleaning industry.