Death to the ironing pile!
Growing up, my mum was Master of the Laundry.No sooner had you discarded your dirty clothes than they were in the washing machine, hung, dried, ironed and back on the bed. I grew up using this as one of many measures of competency at home.My hat is forever tipped to such Laundry Masters, but I now accept the fact that I am not one of them. And that's OK.In fact, I am very, very, very bad at keeping up with my ironing. Like, bad enough that there are clothes at the bottom of the basket that may or may not have been there since...May. That kind of bad.I generally manage to take care of the top 75% every week, but rarely seem to find time or motivation to finish it completely.And while I'm slowly finding my groove and establishing the rhythms that work in our home, my lack of ironing prowess has always bothered me.Over time though, I've worked out a few hacks to help cut down on the amount of ironing I need to do. Which leaves me time to do more pleasurable things, like scrape paint off windows or clean the toilet.
3 Home Hacks for Ironing Pile Death
1. Shake, shake, shake! As I'm hanging up the wet laundry, I give everything (except handwashing or delicates) three really good, firm shakes before I peg them up. This plus line-drying generally takes care of most wrinkles.2. Sort and fold straight away.Not always practical, I know, but when I can I like to fold and sort the clothes as soon as they come inside or out of the dryer. It means they don't get all creased up sitting in the basket for who knows how long.3. Drop your standards a little. I can't be sure, but I don't think people talk about us behind our backs due to this non-ironing thing. "Oh, would you look at that rumply family? How embarrassing. Can you believe they walk around like that?"Now I no longer iron tshirts, kids clothes, pyjamas, gardening gear, exercise clothes, jeans or shorts. I do iron Sparky's work shirts, anything really creasy like cotton and linen, and a handful of my delicates. I will admit that I love ironing pillowcases and teatowels though. Weird, I know.How about you? Do you iron? Do you avoid the ironing? Do you outsource it? Are you the Mayor of Wrinkle Town?