Euro Chic/Day 25
As far as obstacles go in Euro chic land, there is no larger and more formidable one for me than keeping these dang fancy clothes clean.
Here are just a few things I did in this outfit yesterday:
Crawled under a folding table to retrieve a matchbox car.
Collected chicken eggs.
Carried a muddy three year old at least fifty feet towards the bathtub.
Sat on a small glob of paint at the pottery store.
Ate a meal involving maple syrup without a napkin because I was too lazy to walk back to the kitchen and get one.
I showed mercy on the outfit and changed before washing our muddy dog (whose partner-in-crime I had just carried fifty feet). But even so, the pants were definitely shot, lying there in a heap on the bed, wishing they could figure out a way to stow aboard a cargo ship headed to France and live the Euro chic life they deserved.
So that’s when I broke out the Dryel. 
I had heard, on very good authority, that you could actually dry clean your clothes at home with a kit (which I bought on Amazon). It comes with a spray “stain” bottle, an official Dryel bag to put your clothes in and a “magic cloth” that is placed inside the bag with your clothes as they dry. How does it work? Magic? Well, the magic of chemicals, that is. The people at Dryel seem to be concerned that would-be buyers might be afraid of the amount of chemicals it would take to actually dry clean your clothes at home, so they added an “environmentally friendly” label on the box.
It says:
“Cleaning cloth contains water, cleaning agents, preservatives, a fiber protection agent and perfume. Booster spray contains water, biodegradable cleaning agents and preservatives.”
So there’s actually only one ingredient in there that’s okay for the environment and that’s the biodegradable cleaning agent, which really means this product is loaded with non-environmentally-friendly chemical ingredients. So hey, clean your clothes with it, don’t use it to make margaritas.
I tried it on the dirty outfit in question and it actually worked. It’s not as good as taking your clothes to the dry cleaners – I mean, your clothes don’t come out of the dryer on nice hangers in little plastic bags. But it doesn’t shrink your clothes, the wrinkles come right out and it does a fairly decent job on stains. It’s a good back up system if you’re like me and find the idea of stopping by the dry cleaners a couple times a week with your kids a tedious and unpleasant endeavor.
I just wished I had found Dryel sooner in my Euro chic month. So many times I have tried to “air” the wrinkles out of my pants by shaking them violently while cursing or tried to get rid of stains by scratching them with my fingernails. And perhaps, worst of all, when I’m completely out of clothes because they’re all stuck at the dry cleaners, hiding my skanky pajamas under a big coat and boots to take my kids to school… like I did today.
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