I do not love to clean. Who does though? But I do love the feeling after everything is cleaned. So I guess it’s worth it in the end, right? Let’s hope.
Tonight when my handsome, handsome husband and I came home from work, we decided it was probably time to do the dishes (sadly, we don’t do the dishes as often as we should, because there is only two of us, and we don’t make that many dirty dishes so we wait until we have more to do. By time that happen though, we have a huge pile.). So we went in the kitchen and got to work. Then, I guess we got in the mood and our kitchen cleaning turned into entire main level cleaning, which then turned to master bedroom cleaning and ironing. It was a very productive evening.
While I was cleaning tonight though, I was thinking a lot about the cleaning as I did as a child.
I am very thankful that as a kid, my mom made sure we always had jobs to do and she taught me how to clean.
Tonight, I was vacuuming the living room and I remember as a kid when we had to vacuum the living room, my mom insisted that we move the piano bench out of the way and vacuum everything. So now, when I vacuum the living room, I make sure and move our ottoman so I can vacuum everything and not just around things (I don’t move our love sac out of the way often enough though, it’s a pain to move).
Then, when I was dusting, I moved everything off the end table and bookshelf and dusted the surfaces while they were empty. Then as I put the items back in their places, I ran my dust rag over then to make sure they were also dustless like the shelves they sat on. This practice was also something we were instructed to do when dusting the piano when we were little.
Another thing my mom taught us to do when we cleaned that I still do is after loading the dishwasher, you rinse out the sink and faucet. Then dry the inside of the sink and buff faucet so there are no water spots.
While I know these type of things are standard things that people do when they clean and I complained about when I was little, looking back now, I’m so thankful that my mom taught me these things and got me in the habit. I know sometimes when I am being lazy in my cleaning and don’t move the things when I dust or something like that, it’s never really the same.
One thing that my mom did though and taught us, that I DO NOT follow her lead is ironing. (Her method is better than mine, but I hate it so much, that I just can’t do it).
My mom irons like this: when she does laundry, if there is something that needs ironing, she puts it in “the ironing basket.” This included all kinds of things, like my dad’s dress shirts, polos, her shirts, our shirts, pants, pillowcases, table cloths and sometimes even sheets. Often, one of our jobs for the week was to iron 5 things — not a lot, but considering how much I hate it, it was torture. We would sift through the basket to find the pillowcases and table cloths. If you were one of the first to do your 5 things, you could normally get away with only having to iron the easy things. After the pillowcases and the table cloths the next easiest would be shirts not belonging to my dad (so mom’s t shirts or one of the kids shirts). Then if you had to, you’d move on to dad’s polos. Then if you were really unlucky, you’d end up with dad’s dress shirts. Which were just such a pain because they were hard to iron and if we did a bad job, dad wouldn’t look nice and he was a CIO and needed to look nice. After we did our 5 things, mom would finish the rest. Now, this system was a great system for my family. It helped us learn how to iron (even though we didn’t want to) and we had lots of really nicely pressed things in our house (pillows do look nicer on beds after they have been ironed. Try it if you’ve never done it). Don’t get me wrong, our system had some flaws, but we won’t go into that.
So if I don’t follow my mom’s system, what’s my super awesome ironing system, you may ask? I don’t have one. I hate the chore so much that I would rather wear wrinkled clothes than have to iron. This isn’t a problem for me, because I’ve come to terms with it. It is a little bit of a problem for Bryan though, because his Sunday clothes really do need to be ironed. The system is probably something I should try to adopt from my mom, but it’s just so hard. For a good portion of our marriage so far we didn’t even have an ironing board. My cousin Brandon and his family came to stay with us once and he was amazed that I didn’t have an ironing board.
So here’s my question to you. How do you iron? How do you make sure everything that needs to be ironed gets ironed? And it gets done in a timely manner?
I know part of my problem with it is my attitude, but still, there has to be a way to do it that makes it less horrible, or maybe not less horrible, but so that my husband can look nice (because really, even with a good system, I’ll still only do my hubby’s clothes so he looks nice and I don’t feel like a horrible wife). He’s pretty awesome and deserves a nicely pressed shirt.
( ha ha! That turned out to be a really long article about cleaning. Wow.)
Hi Katie,
My husband loves to wear button down shirts. That is pretty much all he wears, unless he is wearing a sweater or something. What we do is hang dry most things. I think the most important thing is to have a really nice iron and then it doesn’t seem like such a choir. We just iron things when we are going to wear them. We just keep the ironing board out in the laundry room and the iron pluged in (it turns off after not being used). We have a rowenta iron they start at like $100, but they are worth it. You just shake the iron and it heats up in 30 seconds. It is also quite heavy, and very hot so it takes less then a minuet for Tyler to iron his shirt before he wears it. Anyway, that is my suggestion. Hope it helps!
OK, so I only iron when necessary. I know a lot of people (my mother included) that usually iron all at once, but I rather just fold and hang up right from the dryer and iron if something needs it as I’m getting ready.
More minutiae:
I iron from left to right. On an ironing board. My wife likes to iron on the floor (using a towel) or on a desk if she needs to hurry. My mom trained me to fear fire.
Ironing on carpet and wood causes fires. Or so I was taught.
I then need the pointy part of the ironing board on my left side. I’ve tried it on my right, and I can’t do it. It’s frustratingly difficult for me to iron that way.
When ironing a button-up shirt (I don’t usually iron t-shirts), I always do the right side front first, the the right, then the back. Arms are next, and I save the collar for last. Rarely I flip flop which front I do first.
No doubt this is boring to read.
Shredder: “They’re babies!”
Livelier? Good.
Now for pants: unless they are dress pants that I’m ironing, I only iron a crease if they are dress slacks for church. I SHALL NOT put creases in khaki pants and/or jeans.
I’m not some geriatric and believe that no one should iron a crease in jeans. Repeat:
Never. Iron. A. Crease. In. Your. Jeans.
So thanks for the question, Katie. For some reason I really wanted to answer it, maybe because I am very particular in how I iron.
pace/gioia.
Don’t you love how doing the dishes is the proverbial gateway drug into cleaning the rest of the house? It happens to me everytime. I was quite amused at your attention to detail in your cleaning process, can we say wow! Your husband is quite the man for cleaning with you.
As far as ironing goes, I’ve come to terms with it as well. However, Johnathan does have a bachelor’s solution to all this. We always buy the wrinkle-free dress shirts, and whenever he wants them looking nicer, he throws a wet sock in the dryer (a clean one:) along with the shirt. Only on very special occasions will I let the iron see the light of day.
I never, repeat never, iron. (Probably because my mom never ironed.) Mark insists that his dress shirts all be “wrinkle-free,” and as for the rest of our wardrobe–didn’t you know that wrinkles are trendy?
Dry Cleaning!! It’s wonderful! Haha!
Amen to all of the above. I don’t hate ironing, but I don’t do it because it requires so much preparation – get out the iron, fill it with water, get it hot, get out the board, wait for the stuff to cool down when you’re done – the ironing stuff always stays out FOR DAYS after I iron, which is the only reason I hate it.
Also, I’ve never heard of ironing pillowcases, but now I want to…..
Here’s my system. If Josh wants ironed shirts, we iron them as he wears them. This is because our closet is small and PACKED full so it gets re-wrinkled if I iron it before hanging. This is a bad system because not even one time since we got married have we had enough time to iron as we rush out the door to some “look like real person” event. Never. So, every 6-7 months I can’t stand it anymore and I iron everything I can find while watching a really great chick flick. And that’s gotta be good enough. Bad huh?
I, too, iron on an as-needed basis. I ususally hang clothes up right out of the dryer (or after they’ve dried if I hang dry them) and iron them when it’s time to wear them. I don’t have many items that require it. I love clothes with the “wrinkle free” label. Olivia and Sean have learned how to iron (supervised) so my work load is diminishing. Good luck in your quest to finding what works for you!
I just take those “need to be ironed” things right out of the dryer, fluff them up a bit and hang them up immediately. That’s about 90% of the ironing I do….our ironing board doesn’t open and close very easily so that makes it happen even less often.
Katie,
I’m just like you. I hate ironing with a passion. In fact, I gave my ironing board away to the DI. -Isn’t that terrible? Anyway, my way of ironing is throwing what ever needs to be ironed in the dryer. If that doesn’t work, and the item HAS to be wrinkle free, we send it to the dry cleaners. There you go.
I hang up everything immediately. Then I tell Harold to iron his own shirts! He always does a better job than I do :) Want to borrow him? He will probably work for pretty cheap!
Yep, I am a non-ironer too. Sad huh? It is becoming a lost art. My mom didn’t iron much… I think I taught myself, read: I suck at ironing.
Maybe there is a reason I don’t have boys. Most of Tyler’s shirts are wrinkle free and the rest I try to hang up right away.
Ooh, or I try to get away with the ‘I have been wearing this long enough that it is wrinkled from me wearing it—not because I am a total slacker’ look. Do you think anyone is fooled?
So, since my siblings go to a charter school, and I have 4 brothers that go there, and my dad’s a seminary teacher, my mom cleans lots and lots and lots of dress shirts. Here’s her secret – she has a cheap hanger stand thingy that can hold all the dress shirts, so she can hang them right after they come out of the dryer, but doesn’t necessarily have to transport to the kids’ and husband’s closets right after they’re dried. She says that keeps them virtually wrinkle free.