Why spend $500 for a cabinet that sprays your clothes with Frabreeze?

Basically a Fabreeze chamber for the price of a washing machine? No. As fun as it would be to find out what that thing does to your indoor air quality— if you've got money for this, you can do it the correct way; which is to take your dry cleaning to the dry cleaners.

And for those who think you can wash everything -- everything! -- just keep in mind that the washing isn't all of it. Can you also press everything so well that it looks right and fits correctly? Unless you have professional pressure on your steam iron, and have learned how to roll a collar properly, and can block a knit garment, the answer is no.

@3: Fancy pressing? In Seattle? Hahaha.

If for $500 you get a cabinet that rinses your clothes in supercritical carbon dioxide, that's a good deal. A Febreeze cabinet, not so much.

@3 It's actually not hard if you have a decent iron and a blocking mat. Those of us who don't like the cost (monetary and environmental) of dry cleaning tend to invest in those things

We all need to reduce the amount of pre-packaged disposables we use. Yet another appliance that uses yet another single-use cartridge that comes in a foil bag packed in a cardboard box? A cleaning appliance that doesn't actually clean anything? Please.

If you just want to deodorize a recently-worn but not obviously soiled dry-clean-only garment, here's a novel, inexpensive, and environmentally-sound idea that probably works at least as well as this stupid appliance. Hang it outside for a couple of hours when it's not raining.

@7 In principle this is a good ideal, but make sure you don't hang them in direct sunlight solar radiation is really hard on some supposedly dry clean only fabrics like silk and wool.

@3 is correct. @6 is not. You can't get a proper press with a home iron; it's impossible. Maybe good enough for a pair of pants or knitwear, but even an absolutely anal ironing obsessive like me can't get a shirt done the way the dry cleaner does. When I iron at home I spend at least half an hour on a shirt, and it's still nothing like the big panini-style steam press turns out (in a tenth the time). No, table-top models are not the same.

And the best hand ironer in the world can't do a suit jacket worth a crap.

Note that 95% of the garments I take to the "dry cleaner" get laundered, not dry cleaned. And a suit or jacket or a pair of wool slacks only needs dry cleaning when it's visibly dirty or smells, especially if you brush it after each wearing.

$500 would buy a LOT of real dry cleaning. And for something that doesn't actually clean anything, just tarts it up and makes it smell better, this sounds like the stupidest product of the year.

No thank you.

Whatever happened to Dryel?
http://lifehacker.com/5860672/dryel-home…

@7
Thank you. That was exactly my first thought. This influx of extra packaging small units drives me nuts.

My most horrific find was several years ago: the packaging of apple sauce in stupid mylar with plastic cap single serving for kids to learn that this is the way to eat APPLESAUCE!

How about a freaking apple or very ripe pear?!

@13: Or how about a glass jar of applesauce? It's a larger container, so it's more efficient as far as container-mass-to-enclosed-volume ratio goes, and it's not some tiny dinky little "serving" that's about half a mouthful for someone my size. Because I'm sorry, prepackaged servings are never designed for big apes like me. Even now that my metabolism has slowed down, I'll eat a big tub of yogurt as two servings and think nothing of it. A regular-size sandwich is a snack for me. Packaging tiny units is one of many things that pisses me off about consumer culture.

@5 I'm willing to defer.

Please explain, how is a "cabinet that rinses your clothes in supercritical carbon dioxide", all that different then brushing your suit, hanging it carefully in the bathroom while you take a hot steamy shower, spritzing it with whatever for odor control and doing a bit of touch up with an iron while watching TV?

Time involved? I'm guessing you have to hang the garment carefully in either case. Brushing doesn't take long but I'll give the cabinet a pass on that, so we're left with $500 for a cabinet plus whatever for the Tide Pods vs. $20 bucks for an iron and well if you must the perfume spritz.

Don't you wish your boyfriend was Swash like me?

Fnarf, while I normally agree with you, in this case I'm going to absolutely own my disagree. I can get the same press with my steam iron that I can get from the dry cleaner. Yeah, it takes a little more time (though not 30 min), but its time I don't mind spending. That being said, I own a professional quality iron (I do a lot of sewing) not a 30-50 dollar Target model, and I will absolutely buy the argument of someone not wanting to spend the time (your time after all is worth something)

I try to buy nothing that requires dry cleaning.

But I live in Los Angeles where tweed, heavy winter coats and the like, really aren't necessary.

@15: Because supercritical CO2 is, rather than being a gas or a liquid, a strange crossbreed of the two known as a supercritical fluid. This means it has no surface tension when dissipating out of the threads of textiles, since there is no liquid-gas interface. It is surface tension that is responsible for clothes shrinking.
That's why some things are dry-clean-only; nice suits don't tolerate shrinking very well.