But often in our relentless pursuit of excellence, we fail to look back and appreciate some of the advancements and achievements in Bachelor History. And so let me share with you one of my own achievements. An achievement I developed waaaaay back in the Dark Ages:
1999.
Ironing sucks. No self-respecting bachelor likes to do it, and it takes up not only time, but an ironing board as well. No doubt, young Bachelors, you have naturally found that a towel on the floor will suffice as an adequate enough ironing board, but that still doesn't alleviate you of the annoying task of ironing, ESPECIALLY when it comes to dress shirts.
Of all of our articles of clothing, dress shirts are the most cumbersome because you have collars, sleeves, cuffs, the front and the back. But if you're smart you'll volunteer to wear a suit at work even if it's "business casual." Why?
Because the suit covers up the majority of your dress shirt, necessitating you only iron a very small percent of the actual shirt.
If you see the diagram below, you'll notice the area within the yellow lines. This is the only part of your dress shirt that is actually exposed while wearing a suit. It takes less than 20 seconds to iron it, thereby saving you at least 4 minutes each day in ironing!
If you prorate that over a 35 year career, assuming you have to iron each day and apply the median income of a male to the corresponding labor (583 hours), that results in a savings of $13,708!
Now, you can certainly buy a couple suit jackets with that now can't you?
Send your "Achievements in Bachelor History" to the Captain!
10 comments:
Good advice, but unless you are really tight for cash send them to a laundry. I used to meticulously iron my dress shirts when I was in the army, which wasn't a huge deal because I didn't have to wear them that often, because we usually wore combat clothing. I then got a headquarters job in Ottawa and had to wear dress shirts every day. I would ride my bike to work - too cheap to pay for parking - then have a shower and put on my uniform. The uniforms then went to the laundry down the street. My work uniforms never even went home. If I took a pair of trousers or two, they would do the shirts for about 1.50 a piece. Well worth the money. Now I wear coveralls at work and the company cleans them for us. - minuteman
Here is an even better trick. Hang your shirts while they are still damp somewhere like a shower curtain rod so there is space between them. Pretty much wrinkle free when dry.
It really is a matter of what you have more of, money or time. I certainly went through many, many years where I bought inexpensive dress shirts off the clearance rack and washed and ironed them myself. Now I'm willing to buy time with money and ALL of my work clothes go to the laundry and dry cleaners as I work at a more upscale place than I once did and what I used to wear won't cut it any more. Hint - if you want to use such services but still be economical, wear t-shirts under your dress shirts. This is a big no-no on some men's fashion sites but (a) it's just work and no one will notice and (b) you can get four or five days out of a dress shirt that way.
You also need to iron the cuffs.
You were about to see one hell of an achievement the other day with a penny stock I've been holding for years now. Turned 500 into 2.9 million (500,100% gain) but I couldn't sell it dammit and it went right back down. We shall see what happens because this bad boy has been naked shorted to death. Not counting on it but damn it was nice to see those numbers. I was already thumbing through Ferrari's that day.
The "hang up after washing" or "throw in the dryer" technique works, if you have the time. They also don't do quite the job a good ironing of a small area will do.
Select the right cotton shirt material (lower thread count) and wash without a wringing cycle.
When hanging out the washing, whip the shirts as hard as you can, gets out almost all the wrinkles.
Excellent tip. I could have used that a couple times.
Nowadays, however, they make shirts and pants with wrinkle free and stain resistant fabric. All of the khakis I wear to work are equipped with these features. I just toss em' in the dryer and I am good to go.
I was once explaining to my girlfriend how I refuse to buy dress clothing that isn't equipped with these features. After telling her that she should consider doing the same thing, she responded: "but they don't make women's clothing with that".
How telling is that as indication of what women want out of their clothing, as opposed to men?
I'm a Bachelor and for some reason I find ironing to be somewhat enjoyable.
Hmm. To me bachelorhood is not something to excel at except as a means to not being involved with it any more.
And I iron. :)
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