Ironing a shirt
I’ve always wanted to pick up the skill of ironing a shirt and have fooled myself about having learnt the art. Over the past few days, I finally picked it up, for real.
Why I wanted to pick up the skill
Dressing well is important. And well ironed clothes are critical to good dressing.
How?
For the first couple of times that I ironed my shirts, I would randomly target the collar and the broader and easier parts of the shirt. I would basically try to iron over any crease I saw. This took a long time and didn’t guarantee a fully ironed shirt. I later looked up a youtube video to see if I could borrow the process and get the job done more efficiently.
The video was simple and effective. It basically gave me a good flow to the process of ironing and was simply explained. The flow was something like this-
- Moisten the shirt
- Iron the collar first, front and back
- Then iron the cuffs-front and back, left and right
- Iron the face of the shirt (buttoned up) and also make sure you slip the iron in between the buttons (Spend more time on this step because it is the most visually prominent part of your shirt)
- Iron the back of the shirt
- Iron the arms- front and back, left and right.
- Do a quick check and iron over any crease that’s still visible
- Hang it
Effectiveness
I spend 5 minutes on a shirt now and usually have all my shirts ironed for the week on a Sunday evening in under half hour!
Link to the YouTube video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EpinulvKTA
P.S-I found ironing to be therapeutic (just like I find washing dishes or cleaning cars to be extremely relaxing). Domestic things are strangely therapeutic :-)
