You dont HAVE to dry clean your worksuits. You could just be skankmeister.

Fair point but I like earning good money and at least pretending that women might find me attractive, both of which demand some degree of cleanliness.

if you have to have suits for work do you claim it as a work expense for tax? You should try it.

No,I have to dry clean my work suits, it costs me a tenner a go. I suspect this is a lot more expensive than taking clothes home and sticking them in a 60 degree wash.

HTH.
Do you dry clean each suit after each day at work?

gawd! get over it!

We've been told to strictly never to wash our lab coats at home, I'm sure HPA would be interested in home washing of soiled and infected linen

Do you dry clean each suit after each day at work?

Nope, once a week, it's still more expensive than washing some clothes 5 times a week though.

There are also some of us that work in hospitals but don't have a uniform.

You dry clean a suit once a week? Jesus. Either it's made of vinyl to start with or you're hideously abusing it.

I R Sweaty boy. So yes, I abuse them. So not only do I have to buy my own suits, I have to dry clean them every week and they wear out really quickly.

Hopefully that will put the OP's complaint in perspective.

because of the risk of infection from those of us who do work in 'yuck' places' and because the public are 'semi-informed' and will jump to the conclusion that we are spreading germs etc and be disillusioned about this

There either is or isn't a risk, surely? Which is it?

Personally I'd either get on with it or outright demand the laundering facilities are easy to use and reliable, nothing in between.

re tax expense/suits
I tried and I lost:
– suit only required as I worked in a consultancy and I was required by my employer to wear 'professional dress', a suit isn't required for anything else in my life
– various letters – rejected
– tribunal – rejected
offer to go to court, and I would pay costs if I lost – too risky, gave up

tempted to try again in light of some mp claims that ere wholly,necessarily and exclusively' on behalf of their jobs

fair enough gusmac – I wondered if anyone had fought that.

I even get a shoe and sock allowance from the taxman ( pennies tho)

coffeeking – I think the evidence base for the infection risk with home laundering is pretty unconvincing – so policy is made locally by the infection control committee who will take a view on whether it is a risk or not and because the research is not convincing different conclusions can be reached.

easy enough, all nurses should be naked (and vetted to ensure they are Hot)

Surely if your uniform gets covered in bodily fluids and stuff you need to change out of it there and then and it goes in to the same washing pile as scrubs etc?

I can completely see though that if its your uniform you wear all day then you should wash it at home.

Olly – Member

easy enough, all nurses should be naked (and vetted to ensure they are Hot)

Me and no teeth? Naked? Really?

Looks like its been reccomended for a while:

Journal of Hospital Infection, Jan 2006
Laundering of hospital staff uniforms at home

Few hospitals now launder staff uniforms. Staff are expected to use their own domestic machines, most of which run with 40 degrees C cycles. However, there is little information on the effectiveness of home laundering. This study demonstrates that domestic washing machines reduce viable counts of Staphylococcus aureus to below detectable levels from an inoculum of 10(8)-10(12) colony-forming units (>or=10(6)-fold reduction), even using low temperature (40 degrees C) programmes. Environmental organisms, predominantly Gram-negative flora, were introduced from the machine itself but were destroyed by tumble drying or ironing. Domestic laundering of uniforms is an acceptable alternative to hospital laundering if combined with tumble drying or ironing