8 April 2020, An item from another time

We didn’t do household chores when I grew up - my mother always had help, a house keeper, an au-pair, a cleaner. I remember the preparation of ironing sheets in a heavy rotary machine. I don’t remember my mother ironing my father’s shirt - although she must have done - but I vividly remember that big machine. It had a moving, cloth covered roller and a hot hot iron that pressed whatever was sucked in by the automatically moving roller. The bed sheets. The tea towels. The handkerchiefs.

Linen and cotton needed preparation. We stood at either end of the long narrow kitchen, each holding corners of the big sheets. When we were little my brother and I held a corner each, with my mother holding two at the other end. Later only one child was needed.

We held the sheets. Flapped them up and down to get rid of a few crinkles - oh the noise we could create. My mother sprinkled water from a little plastic bottle with holes in the lid onto the sheets. We flapped them again, then rolled them up tight for the sprinkles could spread, to give sheets and towels an even moistness rather than wet splotches. They’d rest, the sheets, to be pushed through the ironing machine later.

It was a big job - lots of sheets in a family with 4 children, and always more than 2 adults.

The smell of clean, hot pressed freshly washed clothes. Ironing is no chore - to this day it reminds me of luxury - of time to iron clothes, of having materials that need ironing rather than cheap maintenance free poly cotton. I don’t iron my bedsheets - it’s too har on the thin ironing board - but I enjoy the time I spend on that ironing board, watching my clothes lose their crinkles, pressing the hankies into shape, enjoying that hot clean smell…