The One Laundry Product That Saved Me Thousands of Dollars on Dry Cleaning Is On Sale Today

This year isn’t going down easy, team. In addition to being smack dab in the middle of a pandemic, many of us are finding ourselves under the weight of new responsibilities within the home, and that puts added pressure on an already tense time. Allow me to take one of those tasks off the list: the Samsung Airdresser, $1,149, (which is currently steeply discounted by $600) while a steep initial investment can seriously cut your laundry struggles, by offering dry-cleaning level care for your clothes in about 40 minutes.

Billed as a clothing sanitizer, the Airdresser works by emitting high-temperature steam onto your clothes to remove dust and 99 percent of fabric odors. The chest opens like a wardrobe, and within, you’ll find a closet-like set-up, complete with three hangers, hooks for accessories, and a makeshift shelf for items that you might want to lay flat. (Think: kids toys, scarves, blankets, etc.) Once you’ve selected the items that you want to clean and have placed them inside the Airdresser, you can either manually turn on the machine by selecting from four cleaning modes—normal, quick, sanitize, or delicates—or you can pair the machine with the Samsung Smart Things app. Doing the latter will allow you to pick the very best “care recipe” for your selected items so that they’re properly cleaned.

Shop now: Samsung Airdresser, $1,149

Shop now: Samsung Airdresser, $1,149

While I was expecting to need some sort of water hose set-up, in actuality, you simply need an outlet to plug it in, which means it can live wherever you want it to in your home. In fact, I’ve seen some pretty smart closet integrations that make Cher Horowitz’s smart closet look like a relic. There are two reservoirs at the bottom of the chest: the refill tank and the drain tank; and big surprise here, you fill-up the refill tank with new water and dispose of the used water from the drain tank. This water cycling system, along with a dehumidify feature, helps to keep things inside of the machine sanitary and prevents mold and mildew growth.

Ahead of using the Airdresser for the first time, I downloaded the app to see which cycle was best for the piece that I was going to clean: an embroidered cotton button-up that’s a Zoom dream (read: long enough to be a dress when sitting down, but actually nowhere near long enough on standing up). The piece in question had been crammed into the back of my closet last spring in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in NYC. It was sort of smelly, definitely not fresh, and mildly wrinkled to say the least, making it the perfect piece to put the Airdresser to the test.

I used the app to set the Airdresser and it recommended a 40-ish minute cycle for the shirt and put in a dryer sheet to help freshen things with an “outdoor fresh” scent, given that I go outside next to never these days. I know that laundry shouldn’t be exciting—remember when you were a kid and your parents got a vacuum for their birthday and you swore that would never be you—but somehow this kind of was. When the cycle finished I opened the box to find my shirt no longer smelling of stress sweat. It was ready to wear and much fresher. While the Airdresser didn’t rid the piece of all of the wrinkles—I probably still would’ve lightly ironed it—within 40 minutes I was back in business without the need to drop it at the local dry cleaner and pick it up in four days (or forget about it forever).

All in all, if you’re someone who dry cleans often and is ready to ditch the big bills for an at-home alternative, the future is here and, wow, is it easy.

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