When I was 22 and just out of college, I worked for a Big 8 accounting firm, in an office on the 21st floor of a high-rise office building at 16th and Market Streets in Philadelphia. That was my first real experience with a corporate job. I was a proofreader. Every morning when I came in to work, I found a pile of financial statements and audit reports on my desk, which was a long counter built into the wall; and I would plow through them with a 10-key adding machine (we checked the numbers) and a blue pencil (to mark typos and misspellings). The proofreaders (there were four of us) had a room to ourselves, and the typists were in the room next door to us. The production manager had her own tiny office; she managed the flow of work between us and the typists.
One of the other proofreaders was an older lady (she was probably about my age now, but I was 22 so she was an older lady to me). She had a daughter about my age, who was a distant acquaintance of mine. She attended a different parochial school, but some of my high school friends knew her. Anyway, the lady I worked with also had a 19-year-old son, and a husband who worked in a nearby office building. She loved her family, but she complained about them all the time. The children both worked and attended classes, and they still lived at home; and apparently, no one in the house ever lifted a finger to help her. She did all of the shopping, cooking, laundry, cleaning, etc., for her whole household, and also worked full-time. She was a pleasant, congenial person--even her complaining was good-natured. But I still felt rather bad for her.
One of the things Marie (I’ll call her Marie, because that was her name) complained about was ironing. She ironed everything--jeans, t-shirts, knitted garments, even sheets--for a household of four. One time she told me that her daughter tried to help her with the ironing, but Marie shooed her away. “She irons wrinkles INTO the clothes, not OUT of them.”
This conversation gave me better insight into Marie’s home life. The more I got to know her, the clearer it became that even if she claimed to want help with the housework, no one could ever really help her because no one could ever do anything to her standards. I’m very much like this myself. I might grumble to myself that it would be nice if someone would clean up the kitchen after dinner; but actually, they do clean up the kitchen. They just don’t do it the same way I do it so I end up redoing it because I can’t think straight knowing that there are still food scraps in the sink; or that someone might have put the leftovers away without wiping down the containers first.
Seriously. If you don’t wipe off the containers, you’ll have a gross ring of food crust on the refrigerator shelf. What’s wrong with you?
But one thing that anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can do better than I can is ironing. I never iron, and I mean never, and I mean NEVER. Really never. Most of my clothes don’t require ironing. When things are wrinkled, I hang them in the bathroom--two or three days on the hanger in the shower steam, and they’re ready to wear. My dryer has a wrinkle release setting, which also works pretty well. And for anything that won’t respond to shower steam or tumble drying, there’s always the dry cleaner. For the longest time, I didn’t even know where my iron was; and I didn’t miss it.
*****
I’ve remained fairly busy during the pandemic quarantine/period of isolation/whatever we are calling it today. I’m still working full-time, and I’m trying to help neighbors and remain in something of a routine. But still, I’m not driving to and from work every day. I’m not grocery shopping very often. I don’t have concerts and swim meets and baseball games to attend. I’m not going out to socialize. So I still have more free time than I did before this started.
So much more time that I actually ironed some things yesterday. I thought about the last time I had ironed something, and it was almost eight years ago--my son had to wear a white oxford shirt for his first middle school band concert and I ironed the front of the shirt. The sleeves, as I remember, didn’t look that bad; and no one was going to see the back. I made a cursory pass of the iron over the front of the shirt and the button placket and the job was done. And then I sat through my first middle school band concert, which is a better way to spend time than ironing.
I took a similar approach with the three blouses that I ironed yesterday. Two of them are pullover blouses, that fasten with single buttons at the back. I laid them flat, ran the iron over them, and didn’t worry about the crease that I pressed right into one of the sleeves. Finally, I thought--now I know what Marie meant when she complained about ironing wrinkles INTO a shirt. The button-up blouse took five steps--a swipe for each of the two front panels, a swipe for each sleeve (the sleeves were the worst part) and a swipe over the button placket. The collar was fine, and I always wear a cardigan over this particular blouse, which means that no one will see the back.
That was April 9, 2020. Barring another pandemic or an ironing emergency, I don’t expect to iron again until around January of 2028. I won’t have time. I have to write about not ironing, and I have to wipe down the refrigerator shelves. There are only so many hours in a day.
No comments:
Post a Comment