Earlier this morning, I was reading an article about irons. It said that if I really wanted to splurge, I could buy a Miele B 865 E Rotary Iron, for $2,295. So naturally, my first question was: what's an iron?
I am, you see, somewhat ‘clothing care challenged.’ When the soap commercial comes on TV and asks, “What is your biggest laundry problem?” my family does not say “ring around the collar.” They say: “Chandra.”
Let's start with laundry collection. I have only recently become the proud owner of a `sock drawer.’ My old dresser only had two drawers; since I could never decide whether to file socks under “unmentionables” or “mentionables” I usually just tossed them at the nearest piece of furniture. As the dresser was quite small, many other stray bits also had to be, um, filed, the same way. Add to this the fact that my shelves and desk, which I last saw in 1987, are also too small to hold all my things, and you have a room that I like to call “creatively organized.” For the record, I want to deny the rumor that Steve Irwin, a.k.a. the Crocodile Hunter, shot his new movie in my room. The fact is, it was never an option, because he was too scared to look under my bed.
But I digress. Once I have gathered enough laundry to make up a load, I'll take it downstairs to the washing machine, throw in some soap and … promptly forget about it. Indeed, laundry is one of the reasons why I'm taking a PhD in science. This is so that a) I can really be the absent-minded professor my family claims I am and b) so that I can study the strange, bluish life forms that appear on wet clothes after about a week.
After a second, and sometimes third wash (depending on how forgetful I am), I will actually manage to get the load into the dryer, where it will sit for another week. The advantage is that I never have to use fabric softener: after a half dozen consecutive washes and sitting for several days in a crush of heavy clothes, my unmentionables are as soft as can be.
It should be no surprise then, to realize that ironing is just not in my vocabulary. My approach to wrinkle management varies depending on the day:
Working in the home office: wrinkles, schminkles.
Going out in public: Dunk the offending item in some water and toss it in the dryer for a fluffing.
Now I know some of you are going to write and give me heck for using an appliance inefficiently, and single handedly destroying the ozone layer over Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania. But think of it this way: I use far less energy with the dryer than I would with an iron, which I would forget and leave on for a week. (By which point, it would have burned its way through two floors to the basement.) Plus, even if it is inefficient, it's people like me who keep companies like Enron afloat long enough for everyone to bail out.
Which brings me to my second question about the $2,295 iron. Who the heck pays that kind of money for an appliance that you still have to operate manually? I would much rather pay someone say, $10/hour to iron my clothes, and employ them for 229 hours. This means they could iron at least at least 4580 pieces of clothing, which is approximately 4560 more pieces than I own.
And meanwhile, I could get on with… less pressing concerns.
To read more of Chandra's work, visit www.ChandraKClarke.com.
