As you know, I’ve picked up some new shirts as of late. Sadly, the problem with button down shirts is that they need to be ironed before you wear them (just the thought of wearing a wrinkled shirt to work makes my mother’s voice ring in my head, ‘You’re not going out looking like that, are you?’ Make it stop!), so that’s how I found myself almost out of a house and home this evening.
I woke up this morning, almost on time, and hopped in the shower. I then went to my closet to try and decide what to wear. All my shirts were horribly wrinkled, so I picked a blue striped one and fetched the iron. Now, I’m an ‘adult’ but I don’t own an ironing board so I drape a towel over my coffee table and iron things on that. This means that I often rest the iron on top of my TV, which is within easy reach of my ironing board/coffee table. After my shirt was ironed to my satisfaction (i.e. I couldn’t see any more wrinkles on it, but invariably that means the shirt is about 75% wrinkle free) I put the iron on top of my TV, got dressed, and hurried off to work.
After many hours at work, slaving over a hot computer, I wearily made my way home. As I stumbled into my apartment, and dropped in my favorite chair to get a moment’s rest I hear an odd noise. It was ticking, but not the ticking of a clock. Have you ever been next to a car that has recently been turned off after driving for a long while? You know that tick you hear, the metal throwing off heat and expanding (or contracting… whichever one it is)? That was the noise I was hearing, but I was pretty sure no one had parked a car in my living room. I scanned the room quickly and that’s when I saw it, sitting on my TV so innocently. An iron on the ‘cotton setting,’ happily heating itself, and using up all the water I put into it this morning to iron the very shirt that I was wearing.
I leapt from my chair, quickly unplugged the iron, and sighed a mighty sigh. The TV, luckily, wasn’t even warm after 10 hours of having an iron sitting upright on it.
The lesson here is clear: I should live in a home of some sort, and I should purchase wrinkle free shirts from now on.
5 responses to “Yet another reason why I shouldn’t live by myself”
I’m glad you’re okay, man. That’s a scary story. A couple of ideas: 1) Dry cleaners. It costs approx. $1/shirt and they come out cleaner and crisper. No matter how much you iron, you can’t make your shirts look like that. Plus, if you have white ones, they will be much whiter and brighter than you can get in your own laundry; and 2) Sounds like an iron with an automatic shutoff is in your future. And an ironing board. The work. Then again, I’d go with #1.
wow you are lucky for that one… i thought most newer irons had automatic shutoff? i agree with the wrinkle free shirts (or having your shirts dry cleaned / pressed) but in the meanwhile, a good habit is to unplug the iron immediately after using it. i mean, don’t even think about turning it off, focus on unplugging it. but then again, i’m a chick and my mom taught me that. oddly enough, my ironing board is only a small step up from yours… i have one of those mini ones that you set on a table (i end up putting it on the floor). it’s a real pain in my ass. that’s why i don’t wear cotton, my friend.
Wow, glad to hear nothing disastrous came from that. I actually had the opposite happen to me recently. Was in a hotel ironing a shirt when I started to realize that, well, it wasn’t hot anymore. Automatic shutoff FTW! Clearly it didn’t trust me.
dude, get yourself some downey wrinkle reducer. spray it on whatever shirt (and pants) you are going to wear that day and hang them up. go take a shower. when you come back the wrinkles will be gone and you’ll smell like fabric softener! i swear by it! its available anywhere they sell febreeze and the like!!
Hi, I met you once, I am a friend of Marisa’s and I’m married to one of your day job colleagues. My tip is to buy those wrinkle-free shirts and then when you dry them, remember to take them out of the dryer AS SOON AS THEY ARE DRY! Then you don’t have to iron. My husband never has to iron. It is harder to find women’s clothing that is “wrinkle-free” so I still have to iron.
🙁
I’ve been enjoying the thanksgiving Fork Yous. I wish I could cook a turkey…but I would have to eat the whole thing myself.