The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-08-12

ply with water and others with spotting fluid. It is largely & matter of judgment to know when to at tack them at home and when to send the garment out. If in doubt, consult your cleaner since good spotting is not as easy as it might appear. Mistakes are inclined to be costly. Furthermore, cleaners tell us that they have the most trouble with spots which have already been wrongly treated at home. Sometimes they can do very little with them.
 One of the simplest ways of avoiding spots is to wear an apron in and around the kitchen. Simil- arly, dress shields will help you get more wear between cleanings. Home drycleaning is not recommended be- cause of the dangers of fire or of inhaling fumes. Furthermore, home cleaning fluids accumulate greasy soil, which you haven't the means of removing, and spread it over other garments which deevlop what used to be known as "drycleaning odor'. We now know that this odor is caused by greasy soil turned ran cid. It is definitely not clean smell.
 In addition to making cleaning jobs last longer, and thus reducing your drycleaning budget, you can help your cleaner make his existing limited facilities go farther by re- moving fragile buttons and orna- ments before having garments cleaned. If you don't he will have to and this takes time and man. power, which is the critical factor in the drycleaning situation today. The same goes for dress shields. Also the drycleaners' Association empha- sizes, one of the most important things you can do is to perform minor repairs yourself. Remember the cleaners time is valuable these days and it is in the interests of everyone that it be devoted as far as possible to drycleanng.
 If belts or vests are not Soiled, don't send them along with the gar ment. When it comes to belts with artificial leather or composition backings, it would be a good idea to keep them home anyway since even in pre-War times the best cleaners could do little with them. And as for belt buckles made of fab ric glued to some kind of form, cleaners can do nothing at all with them.
 Elaborate drapes, lamp shades and cushions are things most clean CTS have no time for under present conditions. They should be frequent ly brushed and aired out at home and made to Go for the duration.
 One excellent cleaner of our ac- quaintance has suggested asking you to pick up your things as soon as possible after they are ready. Once it didn't matter if you waited two or three weeks but today's cleaners simply haven any storage space to spare and your dress, which is wait ing to be picked up, may be the cause of a cleaners inability to ac- cept someone else's soiled one.
 The drycleaner's chief difficulty at present is shortage of help Of all kinds in the face of greater de- mand for his services than ever. And on top of this greater demand the average cleaner is devoting about 25 percent of his time and effort to cleaning for the various armed services, about 95 percent of whose drycleaning requirements are being met by existing civilian dry cleaning facilities. The uniforms Of service men and women must be drycleaned not only for reasons of health and morale but also because there simply are not enough tex ties, manpower or machinery to re place the ones which would ulti- mately have to be discarded if they could not be drycleaned.
 As for Vou and me, the savings effected through the drycleaning oi our garments and home furnishings which won't withstand any other type Of processing without damage run to billions of dollars each year. It is for these reasons that it be hooyes us, In accordance with Mir Nelson's plea, to make your clothes last as long as possible by dry cleaning only when necessary and