We all know the feeling. You're wearing your favorite outfit and feeling more confident than ever, but then disaster strikes – a stray crumb of food, drop of coffee, or speck of dirt leaves a stain! Stains are one of the most frustrating parts of caring for clothing, and removing them can prove to be a truly herculean task.

​At A Touch of Class, we're proud to offer premier laundry valet and dry cleaning services to the San Rafael community – and here are our tips for getting rid of clothing stains.

Often, the best way to fix a stain is to act as fast as possible. Ideally, you should bring the clothing into us for a professional cleaning as soon as possible – that provides the best chance at truly treating the stain and saving the clothing. However, as soon as you notice the stain, it's time to act. If possible, don't let the stain dry. Once a stain dries, it's much more likely for it to set into the fabric of the clothing. Apply water periodically to keep the stain wet and dilute it, making it easier to treat later on.

​Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that once a piece of clothing has a stain, NEVER, ever let it go into a dryer! The heat from a dryer will set the stain into the fabric, making it significantly more difficult (and often impossible) to remove. Keep stained clothing out of sunlight as much as possible, as light can break down some materials and make them harder to out.

​However, the best advice we can give is to leave it to the professionals. Sometimes it's possible to get stains out of clothing on your own – but it's difficult, and "miracle" stain removers rarely live up to their promises. If it's an article of clothing that's truly important to you, your best option is to give it to us for a professional dry cleaning service. If you can tell us as much as possible about the stain, we have specialty cleaning agents and tools that let us remove tough stains and get clothing looking good as new. 

Your clothing deserves the best – and at A Touch of Class, we can give it the VIP treatment. Try our complimentary valet dry cleaning service today. We guarantee your clothing will look and feel better than ever – and if you act fast, we can often take out even the toughest stains!

However, cleaning those skirts can be difficult. At A Touch of Class, we're proud to clean virtually any kind of fabric with our dry cleaning valet service – and here's our advice with Christmas Tree Skirts. 

​Ultimately, the best possible option with cleaning a Christmas Tree Skirt is to leave it to professionals. Christmas Tree Skirts can be made of a whole host of fabrics including silk, felt, cotton, wool, or any combination, and many skirts also contain beautiful embroidery and other designs that can be completely destroyed if washed the wrong way. The truth is, there is no one way to clean a Christmas Tree Skirt: it depends entirely on the material, and what's perfect for one skirt might ruin another. 

​One thing is for sure, though: if you see a stain, the sooner you have it cleaned, the better. Tree sap can harden and bond with fibers over time to produce a durable stain, and the ammonia in pet urine stains can cause dyes to run and bleed into the floor beneath the skirt. While there are plenty of articles of clothing you can clean on your own, when it comes to the family Christmas Tree Skirt, your best bet is to leave it with a dry cleaner.

If you want to give your Christmas Tree Skirt a good deep clean before the holiday season hits us, we at A Touch of Class would love to help. Feel free to learn more about our professional dry cleaning services, or just reach out to us at our contact page if you have any questions. We look forward to keeping your Christmas Tree Skirt – and your entire holiday wardrobe – sparkling clean for the winter season.