Cleaning of Khakis

During the summer months, we see alot of khakis (i.e. Dockers for example). Whether it be shorts or full length trousers. Many of them are white, cream and ivory. Many of them wear the results of their owner's previous meal. There are basically 4 ways one can handle them.

1. You can dryclean all the khakis. Problem is some of them have elastic in them that does not respond well. Some bleed and some are treated and say do not dryclean (recall garments don't have to say do not dryclean).

2. You can launder them with your typical shirt or off the grocery shelf detergent.

3. You can wetclean them in your wetcleaning product, probably neutral to acid in pH.

4. You can wetlcean them in a detergent designed for khakis.

Here are some of the pros and cons of each method. If you dryclean them all, either you have to do excessive pre and post spot removal if they are wetside stained. Or you have to run long drycleaning cycles to get good WSSR (water soluble soil removal), minimum of 15 minutes of cleaning in perc, 25 minutes in petro. You also have to worry dye bleeding or fading possibly (however I have drycleaned alot of khakis over the years w/o problems). The "pro" of drycleaning is that grease stains are dealt with easily. Finishing is easy.

The pro of using your shirt formula or off the shelf grocery product is that water stain removal is great. Years ago before we got all the great wetcleaning detergents we have now, we would on occasion have to "wash" some and my trouser finisher would groan to no end. Why, because alot of effort was required to return them back to "normal". This is definitely a big con.

Using either your wetcleaning or specialty wetcleaning product on khakis has many advantages. First, water soluble stain removal is great. Second, finishing should be NO different than if they were drycleaned as far as time required. Cost of doing them is less in product costs in many instances. The only con is that sometimes grease stains will remain or "move around" instead of being totally removed.

For a small cleaner, who has a front loader or top loader, your CSR can continue to wetclean and dry your khakis all day, long after the steam and drycleaning machine has been turned off.

I started off using wetcleaning detergent/sizing/conditioner on my khakis and moved to a product designed for khakis (Khaki Kleen). My customers love the soft feel of their khakis. My finisher doesn't complain, and spots and stains easily come off in water without any risk of pulling color. If you haven't tried doing your khakis this way, give it some thought. By yourself a gallon of either a khaki product or a gallon of wetcleaning detergent, sizing and conditioner.

Back in the early to mid 1990's, when we were still using a grocery shelf product on our khakis and the trouser finisher would complain. Larry Howard of Laidlaw dropped off samples of their new wetcleaning line and several khakis. He asked me to wetclean them and see what I thought. My trouser finisher was late that day due to an appointment, so I "washed" them with these new wetcleaning products and dried them and hung them up. She finished them in no time flat. I asked her after she was done how they were to do, she said "just fine, no problems...". I said I had washed them (back when we used that word in our plant), she didn't believe me. Everyone else had to convince her I was telling the truth. That did it for me... Gone were all the grocery store detergents.

So if you think that going to the grocery store (or Sams Club) and buying that detergent you buy for khakis is saving you lots of money, go factor in the labor and compare it to using just one ounce per about 10 lbs. of khaki's of many of the wetcleaning products and then compare...