Apart from the dishwasher and the "correct" way to load it, no home appliance inspires as much debate or disdain as the iron.
Depending on who you ask, ironing can be either the most relaxing task in the house or the most stressful, from wrangling with the cord and finding the right setting for your clothes, to avoiding scorch marks.
But what are the things we should be ironing, and is there anyway to avoid whipping out the ironing board at all?
Agnes Bouchier Hayes, Home Economist with the Technological University of the Shannon, joined Today with Claire Byrne to share her tips for mastering ironing.
Among the items that she herself won't iron, Boucher Hayes said, are socks, jeans and sweatshirts: "That mystifies me because a good fold can help a lot."
Bedsheets, however, are a controversial one, with some people insisting on ironing them and others never dreaming of doing so. Boucher Hayes, for one, admits that she doesn't iron her own sheets but adds that there is a benefit for doing so - depending on your sheets.
"If you've spent money on sheets though", she said, "to mind your sheets, yes, ironing is part of the care of the fabric. That would help."
Specifically, Egyptian cotton needs to be ironed to maintain its quality, she said. "You will get the full value of that beautiful, long, crisp cotton from your fabric, from your sheets. But when you iron them, when you wash your sheets, there are a couple of things you can do to mitigate... the creases in the sheets."
She suggests washing your sheets according to the care label but "reduce down the spin cycle, because what you can do then is you can drip dry the sheets, put them into the shower, on a hanger or you can hang them over a clothes horse, but allow the water to drip out.
"And that will mean if you've got them folded, like halved lengthways how you're going to fold them eventually, that will then make them easier to handle and then easier to iron." She added that sheets are much easier to iron when they're slightly damp.
Another tip she shared was to fold your sheets and put them into the hot press with more folded sheets or blankets on top of them, which will "ease out some of the creases as well".
Jeans, however, should never be ironed, according to Boucher Hayes. "I've no problem putting jeans into a dryer. Anything that has a bit of manmade fabric with natural fabric, I've no difficulty with putting them into the dryer", she said.
Once they're dry, don't reach for the iron, she said. "Pull them. Give them a good tug. Pull them top to bottom and then even out the seams and then fold them.
"Lay them out flat, flatten them out on a table, fold one side over the other, outside seam of the leg to outside seam, and then fold the ankle part just up beyond the knee, and the knee up to the waist. And then put them into your press and stack them on top of each other and they come out perfect."
To listen back to the full interview, click above.
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