Admittedly, finding a dry cleaner for your sari can be a challenge. Sometimes you have to go through trial and error and either call or visit your local dry cleaners to see if they will take your sari. The New York Times wrote an interesting article on finding dry cleaners to clean saris for women living in the New York and New Jersey area after Hurricane Sandy.
Why do dry cleaners shy away from accepting South Asian clothing? It largely has to do with the variety of fabrics and metallic work that can make it a challenge.
But here are some tips that can help you find a dry cleaner in your area to dry clean your sari. And FYI, we are thinking of adding that feature to this website to help people more readily identify dry cleaners in their area that will dry clean your South Asian clothing
- Do a basic search on your favorite search engine. If I Google “dry cleaners” and “sari” I might get lucky and find some local dry cleaners. Also, try spelling it with “saree” and that might turn up different search results. I usually try the word “sari” versus “lehenga” or “salwar” because I assume if the dry cleaner can dry clean your sari than they can dry clean your other South Asian clothing.
- Check Yelp.com or another business directly listing website. Similar to the Google search, I’ve had some luck when I type in the words “dry cleaners” and “sari” or “saree”.
- You can try and wash your sari yourself. If you search on the internet, there are plenty of videos showing you how to do it yourself. But if you are short on time or energy, this might be the last resort option.