Adulting

RD has been keen on learning how to be more independent.  He has been helping around the kitchen and doing the laundry.  Recently he mentioned that he would like to learn how to iron clothes, so  the other night I took the opportunity to teach him how to iron shirts.

In all honesty, I find ironing is the most difficult part of the cycle to getting clean clothes.  I mean really, doing the laundry is easy; it's the aftermath that gets you. 

Think about it, you stick a whole load of laundry in the washing machine, add some soap, and press START.  No sweat.  When the final rinse cycle finishes, you pull out the clean clothes and hang them out to dry.  That's a little bit harder because you would have to hang the clothes one at a time but essentially the sun does most of the work. Then comes the hard part, ironing the clothes that need to be ironed ONE by ONE.  

For most of my married life I didn't have to iron.  That's because we had household help in Manila to help with the chores.  When we moved to Australia, naturally I had to re-learn how to iron clothes.  Believe it or not, it was the MacGyver's brother that gave me my refresher course.  We stayed at their place for a month and a half before we found our own rental place and he was the one assigned to iron clothes.  His technique : COLLAR -- SLEEVES -- FRONT -- BACK.

Being the engineer, I needed a mnemonic to remember those steps.  Being a banker, the mnemonic was easy to choose.  CSFB which to a banker translates to CS First Boston.  That's a good code, I can remember that.

I was hoping RD would find that easy to remember as well but somehow it was still a struggle.

MyGirl captured his sentiment in a SnapChat message that evening where she quoted her brother. saying , "why is everything about being an adult so hard???"

There are a lot of different ways of ironing shirts and the link below is just one of them if you don't want your mother calling out after you, "baka habulin ka ng plantsa" ('you might be chased by an iron').

Ironing a Dress Shirt

1
Lay the collar out flat on the ironing board and press. Iron from the points of the collar inward to back of neck. Do the underside of the collar as well. 

2
Press the yoke and shoulders. Position your ironing board inside the shirt and into the arm. If your ironing board does not have a small board to insert into the sleeves, then put the sleeve on top of the ironing board, both sides together flat, and iron. Turn the shirt to iron the backside. Reposition for the opposite shoulder. Then turn the shirt, and do the rear side of the yoke and shoulders 

3
For a long-sleeved shirt, press the cuffs next, similar to the collar instructions. Turn the shirt to press the other side. 

4
Lay one sleeve out flat on the ironing board. Align the sleeve following the bottom seam as guide. Press carefully, moving both layers of fabric flat as the iron glides across front surface of sleeve. Repeat for the other sleeve. Turn the shirt to do the other side of sleeve. Ensure that you pull the iron across the fabric in one direction only, away from where you are holding it down so that the creases are mildly stretched out of the fabric. 

5
Position the body of the shirt on the square end of your ironing board, buttonhole panel first. Press from the bottom tail progressing upward to the collar. Do not allow puckers or folds to press into fabric. Turn the shirt to iron the inside of the body of shirt also. 

6
Move the shirt position to the next body panel, half of the back. Press from the tail progressing upward to the collar. 

7
Move the shirt position to next body panel, the other half of the back. Press as before. 

8
Move shirt position to the last body panel, other half of the front, the button panel. Press as before. 

9
Return pressed shirt to hanger, Button top button and third button.