How to do a Mound of Drycleaning at home for a Fraction of the Cost

No one likes having to drag bags of clothing to the dry cleaners, especially in winter, when stepping outdoors into the cold becomes a tiring task on its own. Yet dry cleaning becomes even more important in the colder months, since the cozy knits in cashmere, yarn, or fleece that we’re wearing nonstop usually require dry cleaning. Unless you have a dry cleaner on your street or an apartment concierge who could handle the heavy lifting for you, you’d usually have to carry armfuls of clothing to the cleaners yourself. Thankfully, there’s an easier way to do things.

Those who want to dry clean their clothes at home can use a home dry-cleaner kit, which basically turns your dryer into a dry-cleaning machine. A time- and money-saving hack to clean clothes in as little as 30 minutes, Dryel and Woolite both make one, and it uses just a few steps to freshen up your clothes. Shoppers on Amazon and Walmart have both given them rave reviews, with one reviewer saying about Dryel, “one of those amazing things that actually improves domestic life and saves money.”

Here’s how the kit works: Each starter kit comes with four cleaning cloths, a reusable fabric protection bag, a stain-removal pen, and an odor- and wrinkle-eliminating spray. To clean, simply add up to five pieces of clothing with one of the cleaning cloths to the reusable fabric protection bag. Toss the bag into your dryer, turn it on to medium heat for 15 to 30 minutes, and that’s all.

The dry cleaning cloth releases steam when heated in your dryer to clean your clothes, and the fabric bag captures the steam to prevent it from immediately drying out in the heat. Except for leather, suede, fur, and velvet, the kit is compatible with most materials like cotton, wool, cashmere, silk, linen, sequins, and more. You can use Dryel’s stain-removal pen to wipe out any stubborn marks before cleaning, as well as the odor-removal spray for any bad smells. These kits have near-perfect ratings on both Amazon and Walmart, with 91 percent of Walmart shoppers who tried saying they’d recommend them.

While each starter kit only comes with four cleaning cloths, the entire kit only costs around $13 to $15, and refill packs of 6 to 8 cloths are around $11 to $15.  If you compare that to the rising cost of taking about a half dozen sweaters to the dry cleaner, you can see it winds up being a pretty massive savings.

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