Open Writing

Cooking and ironing are a girl’s worst friend. At least they were last century when we were bound to the indispensable ironing board and to quote an advert for kitchens the ‘focal point of much food preparation’ the kitchen sink. Thankfully we are liberated mums making our mark in the workforce and are carving out careers. No time to cook or to iron.

While it’s true that in more recent times we have been lured back into the kitchen our aim is more about nourishing our creative urges than a yearning for the return to the daily and thankless grind.

I can’t see women giving ironing a second chance. Ever. Why should we when for the measly price of a salad roll and a cup of coffee somebody else can do it for us. I have taken a straw poll amongst friends and family and I am pleased to say that the only women who still speak fondly of those good old days are women of my mother’s generation. I can only imagine that their rosy coloured memories have more to do with feeling needed and being useful and less about the love for manual labour. These women ironed hankies, bed sheets, pyjamas and shirts, in fact any item that got in the way of their trusty iron got the once over.

I began ironing my sons’ cute little shirts when they were five. I kept it up till the shirts were adult size and not so cute. Imagine working your way through fourteen plus shirts a week. And that’s just for the children. My partner in life hasn’t cottoned on to casual wear yet. He still wears shirts but I had an epiphany ten years ago when my iron broke. I accidentally dropped it to the ground from a great height and have never gotten around to replacing it. Instead I went down the road to my local shopping centre and bought a bunch of polyester cotton shirts that could drip dry if they were hung the right way. I did the same to my bed linen and replaced the cotton hankies with disposable Kleenex (much more hygienic.). Everything else goes to the dry cleaners. I have never looked back.

Every now and again some salesperson stops me in my tracks at my local department store and offers me a demonstration of her whiz bang iron, a snap at three hundred dollars. Granted that it’s shiny and streamlined with lots of mysterious buttons to press, but in the end it’s only a slicker version of my old one. Each time I’m invited to view a demonstration my response to the sales pitch is to ask a pertinent question – will it iron without my assistance. Until the day I get an answer in the positive I intend to walk on by with a sneer on my face.