Now I have always been a bit of a domesticated guy, even living as a bachelor my clothes were always neatly ironed and my dishes were always done. Admittedly, I am not all that great when it comes to cleaning, usually adopting the ‘vacuum the centre of the floor’ approach, but when it comes to neatness and things being on their place, then I am most definitely your man.
Of course, now living with Chantelle means that we have to inevitably take equal turns in doing the chores, though frequently it ends up with her doing the actual cleaning part and me simply handling the rest – for some or other peculiar reason she doesn’t seem to appreciate my knack for shortcuts when it comes to washing floors! :)
So being the domesticated man that I am, I have never been one for shying away from the ironing board, and do a pretty decent job if I say so myself. However, recent discoveries in the world of ironing has led me to believe that a lot of this has in fact got to do with the type of clothes that I used to deal with in the first place.
Men’s clothes are by nature things of simplicity. First off, you have your t-shirt which is basically a giant panel with two sleeves attached. Shirts are slightly more complex with a collar and a larger panel, but it still pretty much all straight lines and panels. The same goes for long pants and shorts, with probably only cargo pants giving the most headaches thanks to their multitude of pockets. You may at this point argue the case of pleats, but honestly, how many males today still wear pleats in their pants? Probably only Donald Trump and that is because he has an army of two just for ironing his pants!
(And if you iron you underwear, then you have some serious issues to deal with.)
Women’s clothes on the other hand forgo all sense of logic and simplicity, instead abounding in strips and bands and pleats and puffiness and shoulders and sleeves of all shapes and sizes, all of which seem to be elastic as hell and incapable of lying still in a flattened pile. Try as you might it is impossible to iron a female shirt and don’t even get me started on those flared pants of theirs! Most of the time I end up hunting for a flat patch, ironing that little bit and then folding the garment up in a ball in the hopes that Chantelle only sees my half-assed work when it is already too late! I am telling you that ironing women’s clothes takes twice as long as men’s but only gets done half as well.
But of course, if ironing is such an issue, then folding is even more so. Again, men’s clothes are nice and simple and fold up in neat little squares, just the way you got them from the shop. Hassle free and without argument, men’s clothes just lie there, waiting to be calmly folded and neatly packed away. Womanly garments on the other hand seem complete and utterly allergic to folding reason and no matter how much care, time or effort you put in, you still end up with a round ball with some loose piece of material that comes from God knows where hanging off of the side! I give up! And don’t think that once the battle to fold them is over that you are done. Oh no, then comes the fun part of trying to find cupboard space in the overcrowded world that is a woman’s closet space. Generally I just pull open a door, toss the clothes in and run, hoping to avoid the tsunami threatening to burst the banks any minute now.
But you want to know what takes the biggest cake in the ironing and folding wars? I have a question that to this day lies unanswered, a question that bugs the heck out of me.
Just how the hell are you supposed to fold a g-string! It is a bloody piece of string for goodness sake!