Ironing Jeans — by sara

The jeans I am ironing today at my apartment in Nairobi.

Let me say first thing that I confess to having once laughed at someone for ironing their jeans. Perhaps that was the day I made an inner vow not to iron anything at all, I really don’t remember. The truth is, I hate to iron. I really think it is because that no matter how hard I try, I am still really bad at it. Doesn’t John Maxwell advise that we should devote 90% of our time to the 10% in life we are really good at? Well if that’s true, then I shouldn’t be ironing at all.

Unfortunately, people with front-loading washing machines who line-dry their clothes are really forced to iron. I am sure this is why Chad has to devote a portion of his day each morning to ironing his own clothes. Many years ago I figured that since it takes me about forty minutes to iron a men’s dress shirt, and then he still irons it before putting it on, it just really isn’t worth my time, or the amount of frustration I endure. However, Chad has a closet full of shirts that need ironing.

I noticed a while back that he didn’t seem to be wearing any “repeats” but then realized that he was going through his closet wearing the least wrinkly ones; in other words, the ones that needed the least amount of ironing. When we were in South Africa, Dora came two days a week and she did the ironing. When we lived in Michigan, I took everything to shirt laundry – well worth my $1.25 since you can get easily get “two wears” out of a crisply starched, laundered shirt. Here in Kenya I do exactly what I did every other place we’ve lived, I don’t iron. The problem is, it’s getting to be a problem. I am actually starting to get worried that Chad will post a want notice up at the grocery in order to hire someone to come to our apartment to iron. So today, before things spiral any further out of control, I’ve got the iron nice and hot…

My Brabantia brand ironing board & coordinating lime green iron.

I was off to a great start and that is where ironing jeans comes into the equation. You see, you can iron the little clothespin “pinchy” lines out of jeans in about 30 seconds. It made me feel really good about myself because after ironing for only two minutes, I was finishing my fourth item. Then I started to remember my old steamer in America — oh how I liked it much better than an iron. Then I started remembering my nice Brabantia ironing board in South Africa – it had lime green flowers & I had a lime green iron to match – that made it easier, um, to look at. And being cuter somehow made it okay. But this flimsy ironing board here in Kenya leave the metal mesh grate marks on your clothes and makes me wish I had taken the lime green one on the plane with me. How that could have happened, I don’t know, but in retrospect it seems like there should have been a way. Unfortunately this line of thinking isn’t good at all – I really need to stop myself before I start thinking of all the useful things I’ve given away, sold or left behind over the past two years of life in three different countries and seven different houses/apartments/farms/coverted garages. Sigh…

Chad doing his laundry before I arrived in Kenya.

I’ve gotten used to not having a dryer and I must say that clothes certainly do look nicer for longer when they have been line dried. And sun-dried sheets are just plain wonderful! The crispy towels I could do without, but truthfully I can hardly recall what a fluffy towel feels like – maybe they would seem strange to me now. One thing I won’t ever do, though, is dry my bedsheets like the maid across the parking lot is doing today. She has freshly laundered white sheets lying out on the parking lot pavement. It seems to me that would just make them dirty again but I better not say “never” because that’s what I said about ironing jeans… and just look what happened with that!

As a footnote, I’ve simply got to add that the electricity has gone out twice since I sat down to write this post, but power outages are a story for another day…