The case of the dirty handbag

So my handbags are dirty. Not just one, but two. And that's just the two that I'm focusing on right now. They're dirty, of course, because I'm not exactly the most careful person in the world, so whatever I brush up against, my handbag goes fullfledgedly into. Including walls, mailboxes, the floor of a restaurant. For some reason, I realized that it sucks to have a dirty coat, so when I wear my pink spring coat I have a ban on newsprint. I'm not allowed to touch it no matter how shocking the news might be. No touching. But with my handbags, I didn't put a ban on any objects coming into contact with it. And the problem is that one is leather and suede and the other is leather and cloth, so I'm not really sure how to clean them.

First, I took them to the dry cleaner. I was getting one pair of pants hemmed, another mended and the two bags cleaned. When I went to pick up the pants and bags however, they were totally dirty. I said, "These doesn't look any better!" to the drycleaning man, but he just looked at me like I was crazy. Then he said "You forgot these here." And I said, "No I didn't. I dropped them off to be drycleaned." But it turned out that he thought I meant I wanted the pants hemmed AND drycleaned. And that I'd just forgotten my bags at the cleaners.

Who forgets two bags at the cleaners, first of all, but more importantly, who carries around THREE handbags to start? I was thankful, though that he KEPT the bags, given that they were both Coach bags, which I can't exactly afford to replace. And since he didn't know I wanted anything done to them, he could've just given them away and I'd have no proof that I'd ever left them there. (Which is why you should ALWAYS check your receipts...which I never do).

So I'm happy with the drycleaning man for his honesty but not enough that I left the bags to be drycleaned for real this time. Because when I said, "Can you dry clean them?", he told me that it would take two weeks and cost $35 each! What?! Who has that kind of money to spend cleaning a bag. So I left, three bags in hand, and for the week before I went on vacation, I would carry all three bags around, searching for a drycleaner who wouldn't take two weeks to clean the bags and wouldn't charge me $35 each. Which I've still yet to find, and the sad thing is that I could've had the bags back by now since it's been more than two weeks, but I didn't feel comfortable about it taking two weeks. I mean, where are they sending these bags that it takes two weeks to get them there, cleaned and back? It's like photo developing. If they say it's going to take any more than a few days, you're not supposed to leave your pictures there, because that means they're sending them somewhere else and then you're liable to end up getting back some naked fat guy's pictures from his vacation at Club Med Hedonism, while your pictures are lost in Kapuskasing. So now, the search continues, but it means that I'm once again walking around town with three bags, which is just so ridiculous in itself. The right side of my brain wants to throw them in the washing machine, but the left half knows better - that this is NOT the solution. They could come out a pink and brown and blue mess, and then I'd just be so upset. And I'd have no one to blame but myself. Surely there has to be a drycleaner who will clean my bags onsite in a day and not charge me $35, isn't there?