Today I gave away my ironing board. Thanks to the wonders of Freecycle, someone else got an ironing board and I got closet space back. A few weeks ago I went into the closet, looked around, and noticed the ironing board hanging on the wall as it always does. I repeat, as it always does. I rarely if ever take it down and actually use it. Yes, I’m a non-ironer, and now it’s out of the closet and so am I.
When I was a child and a teen, my household chore was ironing. I could not stand ironing, and there was a lot of it. I would save it for two weeks or more, and then I would spend an afternoon ironing when I could have been doing something else. This did not engender in me an understanding of the value of hard work. It led to a sort of chronic despair: the clothes I ironed would be worn, tossed in the laundry, and would come back to see me again in the ironing pile the next week.
Now, with fabrics that rarely require ironing and a job that calls for t-shirts and jeans, I simply don’t need to iron. My daughter also wears a lot of jeans, and my husband has those nifty no-iron semi-formal shirts and pants. I don’t want to iron and I don’t need to iron, most of the time.
It is true that I do iron occasionally. Lately I have been getting into sewing, and I find that an iron is very useful to press a seam or get fabric straight before I sew it together. When I feel the need to iron, I simply get out a thin sheet and iron on top of it on my kitchen table. This is a very old table that is usually a craft table and a cat bed. It is tough enough to deal with a bit of steam now and then.
Has anyone else done away with this vital tool for domestic bliss?
Image courtesy of sulaco299 at Stock Exchange.