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How To Pack For Travel: The Suit & Shirt

October 8, 2015 By courtney 3 Comments

How To Pack For Travel: The Suit & Shirt

Since coming out West for college, about four years ago, I’ve put in about 40,000 miles traveling for work, holidays, and friend’s weddings. (Nothing compared to Tom Stuker). The most frustrating thing for me is traveling with nicer clothes–button downs, slacks, etc–since they always end up wrinkled. Over the summer I flew out to Maryland for a buddy’s wedding; when I got there the white shirt I packed looked terrible, so, of course, I tried to iron it. Turns out, not every iron is as effective or as clean as the one’s in our plant. I ended up having to toss the shirt out.

I’ve learned a few tips, pressing pants and pulling wrinkles out of jackets, to help keep your clothes looking great while traveling. Get ready to learn how to pack like a travel ninja!

How to Pack the Suit

Perhaps the most difficult thing to pack is a business suit. The pants are one thing, and I’ll get to those, but that suit jacket is a whole other beast. Some people will just wear a jacket on the plane. This is a very effective and easy option; although, after having numerous drinks spilled on me, I tend to forgo it. Folding a suit jacket, or the stand-alone blazer, can be as mysterious as folding a fitted sheet (which we will kindly share later). It actually is rather simple and rather effective at keeping it looking nice.

Folding and packing a suit jacket

via Jessica van Dop @diningtraveler

The first step: grab your jacket from behind by both shoulders. Next, flip up the collar and lapels. Take the left shoulder and turn it inside out (note that you don’t have to pull the left sleeve through, just the shoulder). After that, fold the jacket in half, inside out, tucking the right shoulder into the left. Your jacket should now be completely turned out and folded in half with no sleeves sticking out. Check out how Mark from the Ike Behar store does it.

Now that you have a nice jacket all inside out, you can do one of two things depending on how you pack your trousers. There’s the traditional two fold or the roll up. For the two fold: match the two front belt loops together, line up the creases on both legs, lay them flat and fold lengthwise. Instead of folding them in half lengthwise, simply roll the pants from the hem up to the waistband. Rolling reduces any strong wrinkling associated with folding.

How to pack a suit jacket

via @diningtraveler

You’ll notice that Mark demonstrates the first method. Saving on space he places the pants right on top of the jacket and then folds it in thirds. The other option is to take your rolled pants and stick them in the shoulders of your jacket and roll your entire suit around the pants from the shoulder downwards. Rolling your clothes reduces more wrinkles and, actually, takes up less space. With each of these methods, you should still take your clothes out of the bag when you get to your hotel and put them on hangers. If you have any small wrinkles you can hang it up in the bathroom while taking a hot shower and the steam will pull out a few of them out.

How to Pack the Dress Shirt

You may have heard, seen, or, heck, even invented new ways to fold your dress shirt for the long haul. Some people just fold it normally; others, roll it. Then there’s still others that just jam it in the bag hoping for a decent iron on the other side (like I’m guilty of). We’ve found that it’s best to fold the shirt around a piece of cardboard, held in place with a paper band, and then placed in garment bag. The shirt stays crisp and clean and packs up nicely since it’s so flat. If you have any cardboard lying around, around 8″ x 11″, you can keep your shirt looking nice.

How to pack smartStarting from the collar, button every other button (there’s no better way to describe it) all the way down. Lay it button side down on a flat, clean surface. Place the cardboard at the base of the collar and equally spaced between the two shoulders. You can then fold the shirt as you normally would; just take care that the sleeves and body of the shirt roughly match the size of cardboard you are using. Placing a band around the shirt will keep it in place (we use a long, narrow sheet of paper that doesn’t constrict the shirt and leave “pucker” wrinkles). Roll up your belt and place it inside the collar to keep it from getting smashed down.

As with the suit, remove it once you get to your destination and hang it up. You might notice a few wrinkles along the cardboard, but these are significantly reduce from simply folding the shirt. The piece of cardboard immobilizes it and keeps it from wrinkling like it would normally. You can always hang it up in the bathroom while taking a warm shower. Or, you can always try to find an available iron (just check to make sure it’s clean).


 

There are countless items to pack and just as many ways of packing, but these are two quick tips that will save you some time and stress. Now you just need to sign up for that yoga class so you can pack yourself in a carry-on. Stay looking your best. Cheers!

Guy packs himself in suitcase

Eh…maybe not.

Filed Under: Blog, Travel Tips Tagged With: Dress Shirt, dry cleaning, How To, Pack, Rolling a suit

5 Benefits Of Professional Dry Cleaning

August 12, 2015 By courtney 9 Comments

5 Benefits Of Professional Dry Cleaning

In an Increasingly Wrinkle-Free, Wet-Wash, Hassle-Free Clothing World, Why Should I Pay For Dry Cleaning?

After all, companies like Jos. A. Bank and Eddie Bauer have worked hard to offer “traveler” lines of wrinkle resistant clothes. While others have developed some fantastic lines of washable silks and wools. Dressing well in the 21st century, like most everything else, has become “user-friendly.” Like most people you can chuck your dirty clothes in your washing machine, dry it, and still look pretty darn good. Simple.

Despite the increasing popularity of these clothing lines, dry cleaning and professional cleaning is no worse for the wear. Here are 5 reasons why you should consider professional dry cleaning.

1. Super Stain Removal

If you’re like me, food has a natural affinity for your clothes; particularly, your nice clothes. For example, if you were out with your friends and dropped some pizza on yourself you would have a number of issues. First, you would have to remove the wet-side tannin from the tomato sauce which requires wet cleaning with something slightly acidic. A quick wash in your machine, right after your pizza made a jump for it, would do a decent job at removing surface stains. However, the bigger issue would be all the oils and greases: olive oil in the sauce and crust, grease from the cheese and meats. The best way to handle these stains is with a powerful degreaser. As a professional cleaners, we have access to incredibly powerful degreasers, soaps, and solvents. A rinse in our Eco-friendly solvent (Solvon K4) would lift those stains out rather quickly. So, eat without fear!

2. Try a Little Tenderness

Dry cleaning is unique in being both powerful and gentle. A lot of clothes you would consider bringing into a professional cleaners are, well, special. You don’t want to go to a laundromat and chuck your favorite shirt or pair of pants into that machine. We bought a Firbimatic f40, Italian made, dry cleaning machine. It’s not only Eco-friendly, but customizable. So instead of whipping your clothes around at 1800 rpm, we can slow it down to 120-140 rpm. Meaning: your clothes get the powerful clean of hydrocarbon solvent with the most gentle process. So, there’s no need to worry about your expensive or, simply, your favourite clothes getting ruined.

3. Finish Like A Pro

"Oh, ah!"

“Oh, ah!”

Like a good golf-swing, we follow through. After your clothes have been tagged, spot cleaned, and washed they will be either hand-pressed or steamed out. Pressing your own clothes can be tedious and often frustrating ordeal. But, it’s our profession. We have specially designed machines to press cuffs and collars, blouses and jackets; even to steam out the top part of your pants. That means you get a fantastic looking finish to your clothes. Having a wrinkle-resistant shirt is very different from having one that has been professionally cleaned and pressed.

4. Lucille, Angora, and Faille! Oh my!

Although there are many easy-to-wear clothing lines, there are still those items, with the unpronounceable fabrics, that need a little extra attention. If you aren’t sure what the fabric is you should research it or bring it in and ask us. It’s our job to know how to clean a variety of items and fabrics. Besides strange fabrics you may just have an item that you shouldn’t try cleaning yourself. Neckties, suits, and blouses are notorious culprits. Just dabbing a stain on one of these items with water or home remedy can have disastrous results that are hard, if not impossible, to reverse. If you aren’t sure about something, play it safe. Take it to a professional.

5. It’s So Fluffy

That’s what most of us would like to say about our bed spreads–nice puffy comforter, mattress topper, pillow. A lot of these items can be cleaned at home. However, since we’re American (Uh-Mur-Uh-Kahn) we like things big and bold. You can often get away with washing a twin size comforter in your standard washing machine. But anything larger and you run into multiple complications. There’s no room for it to spin and actually get clean; it might shove all the filling to one side; worse yet, it might tear. Depending on your lifestyle, it is usually best to let us take care of it. We have the machinery and the ability to safely clean your household items. Whether you have a nice Pendleton wool blanket, a nice set of drapes, or a ginormous cloud-like bed spread we’re able to clean it all.

Filed Under: Benefits, Blog, Dry Cleaning Tagged With: buy local, clean, clean local, cleaners, cleaning, dry cleaning, Eco-friendly, households, laundry, local, Moscow, press, Pullman

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208.882.4231
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Sat: 10am-4pm
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509.339.6267
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