True Quality CleaningStraight talk about caring for fine garments & household textiles from an expert who calls it like it is. In plain English.

The germs hiding in your handbag

You go to the bathroom at the supermarket, wash your hands, lift your handbag off the shelf where it's been sitting and continue into the store where you purchase fruits, vegetables and an array of grocery items.

Do you think you're safe from germs just because you washed your hands with a sanitizing soap?

Well, think again. Because, according to studies, the toilet seat in that bathroom has fewer bacteria than the handbag you just handled.

Consider these two studies, for example ...

A study by Nelson Laboratories in Salt Lake City investigated the cleanliness of women's handbags. The results were shocking: the handbags in the study tested positive not only for the presence of bacteria, but for bacteria of the worst kind such as pseudomonas (which can cause eye infections), staphylococcus aurous (which can cause skin infections) and E-coli (which can cause food poisoning).

A similar study by the University of Arizona found that one-third of the handbags in their study had fecal bacteria present. In fact, some of the handbags were 100 times dirtier than the average toilet seat. While a bacteria level of 200 is considered safe, most of the handbags had bacteria counts in the tens of thousands, and a few had bacteria counts in the millions.

Of course, this makes sense if you think about it. Many women rest their handbags on the floor of their cars, on the baby changing station, inside the pouches of their kiddie's baby stroller (click here and here), on the floor in a restaurant, café, bar or movie theater, on the counter at the bank, and similar places. No one would think of eating off any of these surfaces because of the germ factor: the bacteria attach to the handbag and then to the hand holding the handbag.

Then, when you get home, you unconsciously set it down on a kitchen counter where the germs do a hop, skip and a jump onto the food.

All of which, points out the need to clean your handbags on a more frequent basis.

At RAVE FabriCARE, we clean many different styles of handbags, in many different colors, with many different finishes, and manufactured with different materials or combinations of materials (leather, exotic leather, patent leather, suede, fabric, canvas, nylon, vinyl, straw, etc.).

And how do we deal with all the germs and bacteria that are likely to be found on both the inside and outside of your handbag?

Here's how: After the handbag has been entirely cleaned, we reclean all the non-leather and non-suede parts of your handbag - again - with a specialized antimicrobial cleaner.

You see, our pH neutral, biodegradable cleaner contains surfactants, citrus and hydrogen peroxide. It's a combination degreaser, deodorizer (kills odor causing bacteria), sanitizer (kills 99.99% of common bacteria, including Staph, Salmonella, Strep and E-coli) and virucide (kills 99.9% of specified viruses, including Herpes 2, Influenza AZ/Japan, HIV-1 and Hepatitis B).

We could use an ordinary cleaner like ordinary cleaners. But, we're RAVE FabriCARE. And ordinary just wouldn't cut it.

Take this Gucci GG fabric Sukey handbag for example. The outer fabric, the outer leather trim and the inside lining was filthy - regular soil and dirt as well as black dye transfer from a silk dress and blue dye transfer from an indigo dyed blue jeans. Our job was to restore the outer fabric, the outer leather trim and inside lining to as close to pristine condition as possible.

Clearly, we achieved that goal. And, as a bonus, we deodorized, sanitized and virucided the entire outer fabric and inside lining.

How many handbag cleaners in the USA are as thorough - and, yes, as paranoid - as RAVE FabriCARE?

I'd bet you could count this number on one hand.

The following photos reflect the transformation:

BEFORE