Simple Pleasures: Ironing

The meditative power of steam, metal and fabric.

I realise that for many people, ironing is hell.

For me, it’s meditative. Making order from the chaos. Smoothing away life’s ruffles with a repetitive, purposeful movement. Mindful, even. It’s also about organisation, ritual, tidiness. Having everything ironed and away means that I can take my time over dressing, and wear whatever I like because everything is ready to go!

My Dad taught me to iron shirts when we had to wear them for school, not necessarily out of some paternal desire to give me a useful life skill, but more because he hated ironing shirts. Maybe it was both…

Ironing for me is about getting to know my clothes. When you take the time to feel the fabrics of your wardrobe, notice textures, inspect seams and (hopefully) appreciate some well-made garments, it’s really a fashion geek’s playground. Often it’s said that the mark of a top-quality item of clothing is that it looks just as good inside-out as it doesn't the right way around; you’ll never see this if you don’t iron!

I know I’m not going to convince you easily. But here’s a challenge. Take 5 good pieces out of your wardrobe, and give them an iron. I usually put some background TV on to soften the blow. It won’t take you more than 10 minutes. In our relentless phone-clutching world, it’s nice to take a few minutes to do something practical.

Intrigued? Inspired? Bored? Here’s how to iron a shirt.

Take the shirt and flatten the collar on the ironing board. Iron the collar on both sides, then replace the collar stands/button-up the collar buttons, if needed. Next, the shoulder panel (aka the yoke). Flatten it onto your board and let the collar stand vertically. Try to iron along as closely as possible to the bottom seam. Now the sleeves. Undo all the cuff buttons and stretch the bottom seam of the sleeve along your board. Iron from shoulder to cuff, taking care over any darts. Finally, hook one of the front sides of your shirt over the crook of your ironing board and smoothe. Rotate the shirt around the board, taking care with any darts or pleats in the back. Finally, hang (needless to say: no wire hangers!) and pop it back in your wardrobe.

BTW, maybe Simple Pleasures will turn into a series. Let’s see how we go.

Here’s some other fun stuff from the first week of January:

• Snowfall in Paris bringing out everyone’s inner 8 year old

• Catching up with a friend for coffee and very happily embracing the return of normal life

• Cold cheeks, sunglasses, cozy scarf, jazz on headphones: the ultimate winter combo

• Successfully putting up a small shelf to put some plants on

• Running in the freezing cold (the nice thing here was getting back into the warm again)