I don’t iron. My mother will zealously verify this fact. Not infrequently, when she is a guest for Thanksgiving, I will find her meticulously ironing my cloth napkins shortly after she has walked in the front door. Honestly, how smooth do they need to be to catch crumbs of stuffing or blot up errant cranberry relish?
I have a vivid memory of our ‘ironing lady’ as a child. I would often drive with my mom to drop off or pick up our ironing. The slender elderly woman would hold the screen open for us as we carried out oodles of hangers holding crisp shirts and pants. Generally the ironing primarily included my father’s freshly laundered shirts, but on occasion I could slip in a shirt or a pair of pants. I must admit, there was something appealing about pulling a wrinkle-free shirt out of the closet and having the front lay flat when I buttoned it up.
Now I know that my mom could herself iron; she weaves textiles and frequently could be found, an iron in hand, pressing edges of a recently completed throw. However, somehow I never picked up that homemaking skill. Even my Jr. High Home Economics class neglected to include a unit on ironing. So when I got to college and thought it’d be nice to be able to pull on a crisply ironed shirt, I borrowed a dorm-mate’s iron and set up an ironing board in our common room. I held up my shirt in dismay—the wrinkles made the solid blue shirt appear batik. Where to start? An upperclassman noticed my confusion and quickly offered her efficient and effective advice, showing me where to start (top of the back by the collar) and ending with the front button holes. Yet, despite the fact that I can distinctly remember her instructions and even picture the late day sun streaming through the dust as we ironed, I neglected to keep up the skill and now find myself more often than not pulling on wrinkled clothing. Or equally absurdly, banishing a favorite wrinkle-prone cocktail dress to the dark recesses of my closet.
Rather than converting entirely to wrinkle-free synthetics, I have stumbled upon an alternative, efficient solution to prohibiting, or at least limiting, the wrinkles in my closet. I have found the wind. Or more precisely, the wind has found me. I hang my clothes out to dry whenever possible, primarily because they seem fresher when I take them off of the line. So what a delight when I hung my clothes out to dry with a stiff breeze blowing directly at the shirts and pants and towels clipped firmly to the line. Caught in the wind, the laundry blew nearly horizontal to the ground, the wind flattening the material like it was paid per vanquished wrinkle. I wonder how effective wind could be on that cocktail dress?
