Non Iron Woman

I have a poor relationship with iron. Blood tests have shown that in the past I have been somewhat deficient in it.  Luckily when this occurs I can make dietary changes and take supplements to improve the situation.

Unfortunately there is no supplement I can take to improve my chronic ironing deficiency.

I am terrible at ironing. I know that few people enjoy ironing because it is a laborious and seemingly never ending task. However at least they enjoy the wrinkle free fruits of their labour after all that never ending effort.

I can iron as much as I want and I still look like I haven't bothered.

Today I ironed a set a of bed sheets. They look better then normal because normally I don't bother to iron them at all. This time I decided to persevere and stood for three quarters of an hour ironing them.

You wouldn't know it. They look like I put them on the bed clean out of the dryer. The best parts are the patches where I've been able to somewhat flatten the wrinkles that occurred in the wash.  In the worst parts are the wrinkles I missed all together as well as some new ones that I've managed to iron in.

I also have this problem with clothes. I will work hard to iron a shirt only to have it look marginally better then it did before I started, as though it had once been nicely ironed but had since been worn on a long and sweaty hot car journey.

I can not understand what I am doing wrong. I use the water spray function on the iron. I ensure it is properly topped up with water. I use the appropriate temperature.  I stand and methodically rotate the garment to ensure that every section has received attention. I'm even careful to slowly work my way around any buttons or embellishments. Despite all my efforts I stand there agog as my my iron passes over the same spot time after time only to reveal the same wrinkles staring up at me smugly from my ironing board like the villain at the end of a bad horror film. They just won't stay down.

I can't even blame my iron. It's a reasonably priced iron manufactured by a reasonably reliable company. It's lasted a remarkably long time given that in the past I've tended to get through one iron a year ( I don't know why - they all start leaking on me).

Perhaps practice will make perfect and somehow next week when it's time to iron the sheets I will somehow magically improve.

I doubt it.