A love of ironing?

When I checked my email tonight, I found the following story included...sent from none other than the woman who knows me best - my mom. As I read the story, I swore it could have been me. I guess she beat me to the blog first! Note: I solve my ironing problems by making sure to present anything that I need ironed when my husband does his ironing (he's VERY particular and prefers to do his own ironing. He very rarely asks me to iron for him, and when he does, I know he's really late for work in order to ask!)
Did I mention I struggle to know which way I prefer the ironing board each time? That probably comes from not using it that often. Thank goodness for Eddie Bauer's wrinkle-free shirts!



So, here's what I found about other's struggles with the iron.


The Iron Age
Why it's been that long since I've pressed my family's clothes.
Martha Manikas-Foster | posted 2/27/2008

I suffer from an ironing deficiency. My rare attempt to press a crease adds enough pleats to qualify for the International Accordion Championship. I know the patent for the electric iron in 1882 must have seemed revolutionary, but I'd gladly dedicate my laundry room to the man—or, more likely, the woman—responsible for permanent press. Wrinkled shirt? I spritz it with water and toss it into the dryer. Why else did the little squirt bottle come with the iron? Shirt not smooth yet? I dunk it in the tub and give the dryer another go. If the dryer still can't save the shirt, then I've no choice but to relegate it to the ironing pile.
Most families search for warm memories in a scrapbook; my family finds them in the ironing pile. A baby quilt for my now 16-year-old son. Khakis too wrinkled for his third-grade Christmas concert. The flapper costume from my now college-aged daughter's eighth-grade musical. But the antiquity of these relics doesn't mean I neglect this pile. I visit at least once an Olympiad. Each time I pause and smile: My, how quickly children grow up. Then I box some of the skirts, jumpers, and sailor suits and let my sister iron them for her children.
I never planned to advertise my pressing problem. I inadvertently went public early in my marriage when I volunteered to fetch an iron and board for my visiting mother-in-law to use. Forty-five minutes later, as an ironing-pile archeologist emerging from her first dig, I surfaced, gripping a board under one arm, cradling an iron in the other, and dragging a wrinkled oxford shirt twisted in the iron's electrical cord. I managed to rip off the manufacturer's tag with my teeth before I returned to my mother-in-law.
That little incident would explain the gift my daughter received from her grandparents for one of her first Christmases. No plastic iron or toy ironing board for this girl. Hoping she could overcome her upbringing, my in-laws gave her a Kenmore Light 'n' Easy Steam/Dry Iron complete with SilverStone coating. Accompanying it was a dorm-sized ironing board "so she can practice." I find an extra one comes in handy when I need to prop up a window and I've already pressed the family Sunbeam into service as a doorstop.
Despite my mother-in-law's gentle—yet obvious—clues, I never understood how out of the mainstream I was until a recent disagreement with the contractor planning an addition to my house.
"The dryer goes here, the washer here," he indicated as he paced off a new laundry room on a portion of our backyard. "Here will be the stand-up freezer from the garage." He ended by pointing with satisfaction to where he could attach an indoor clothesline.
I shook my head. "You haven't accounted for the ironing pile."
He looked up from pacing, his face blank. "The ironing pile?"
I ushered him to our current laundry nook and pointed toward a mound the size of Star Wars' Jabba the Hut. He left to rework the drawing.
None of these ironing issues surprise my husband, David. He knows I inherited them honestly. Some of my earliest memories include riding to my mother's friend's house, where Mom handed over my father's wrinkled shirts and then dug into her pocket for some of the grocery money. David witnessed my family's internal wardrobe workings when he lived with us for a summer before our wedding. So he almost called a press conference the time I ironed a shirtfront until it was crisp and smooth. Then he noticed its back could have doubled as a topographic map of an Appalachian watershed.
Early in our marriage, David developed strategies that have kept his attire presentable and our relationship intact. Every so often, while I'm sorting photographs or helping our children with their homework, I hear a squeak and a hiss. And I know David's strapped on the back brace, donned the boots with added arch support, and unearthed the necessary tools for his personal ironing marathon. I smile, then scour the house for available hangers, pump my Iron Man with hydrating fluids, and require he stretch at least every two hours. I also offer expertise, suggesting he iron only the shirt collars, because if God had intended entire shirts to be ironed, he wouldn't have invented the sweater.
But more often I notice that just before a big meeting or social event, David arrives home with a new shirt and mumbles something about needing to "freshen up my wardrobe." Our children believe proper business attire comprises a dress shirt with geometric creases the dimensions of a 9 x 14 -inch piece of cardboard.
I'm not anti-ironing. I don't love my family any less because I can't tell spray starch from cornstarch. But I just don't see why I should try to smooth out every wrinkle. Or any wrinkle. Perhaps wrinkles are even a sign of love. The people God's loved for a long time—they have lots of wrinkles. A coincidence? I think not.
Still, I've made sure to give my children a proper household education by imparting a few ironing tips: Never leave a hot iron unattended. Always store an iron out of the reach of small children. And never, under any circumstance, iron a piece of clothing while wearing it. That's what a curling iron is for.

Martha Manikas-Foster, a freelance writer and radio news reporter, lives with her family in New York.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian Woman magazine.