Home Dry Cleaning

[launderess]

Bajaespuma

Have you tried Fels Naptha soap on your "grease" stains.

Have a stash of the oldler stuff, when it was made by Purex and even some older than that. All contain "naptha" and have never failed to remove any sort of stain that required solvent, including lipstick (some fool left one in a laundromat dryer, and one didn't bother to check, so......, ink pen, salad dressing stains, and others.

Have more than one will ever need, if you wish some shoot me a email.

L.

 

[launderess]

With All Due Respect

Instructions given above, and indeed the whole advice on home "dry cleaning" with petrol and it's knock-off substances was put about long before science and common sense took hold.

Smearing one's hands with lotion is not going to stop petrol, naptha or any of the lot from being absorbed into one's skin. Add on to the fumes from working with the stuff, then breathing in the same while brushing and ironing/pressing garments cleaned in this manner, and it is any wonder women weren't carried off in larger numbers and or injured.

Vintagee Fels Naptha soap is about as close as "dry cleaning" solvent as one wishes to get,and even then one treats the thing with the respect it deserves.

Of course to many women/housekeepers this method of "dry cleaning" was a god-send as otherwise items made of wool, and silk never could be cleaned, or required costly commercial dry cleaning, if it could be had in their area.

Remember watching an episode of the carton "Popeye" where Olive Oyl (what a name), was wailing because she only used "a gallon" of gasoline to clean her dress, and subsequently burnt her house down. If it got into the cartoons of the day, then the occurance must have been general enough in the population.

L.

 

[bajaespuma]

Thank you again, I have some Fels Naptha and I'll try it

I think Americans in general have become so risk-averse that we're afraid of activities that our ancestors and people in other countries engage(d)in ordinarily. Dry Cleaning one's own stuff isn't in that category, but we're so terrified of what "might happen" that we've become a nation of pussies. Can you imagine where the telephone would be today if Mr. Bell was fretting about the beaker of acid? Or any Buster Keaton film? I think we've succumbed to all the scare stories that are being foisted upon us on slow news days. Some risks, certainly, like home dry cleaning, aren't worth it, but to go out on a beautiful sunny summer day worrying about your SPF number seems idiotic.

 

[frigilux]

Beware Chemicals: My mom washed the altar linens for the local Catholic church for years. She removed wax stains using carbon tetrachloride, as did her predecessor. Years later, both women---both non-smokers---died of lung cancer. It was traced to the use of carbon tetrachloride.