Alternatives to a handheld iron and ironing board.

elsmandino

Hello.

My son is starting school, this year, and we are going to have a bit more ironing to do.

I tend to do the ironing on a Sunday afternoon, whilst watching TV, to alleviate the boredom.

By my own admission, I am pretty terrible at it and I take so long to get reasonable results that I end up with a bad back.

Are there any alternatives worth looking at?

I have been reading up on hand-held steamers as well as devices, upon which you hang a shirt and pump steam through them.

These seem to give inferior results to a proper iron.

I then came across presses - they seem to be pretty big/heavy/expensive but seem to be a viable alternative.

Do you think that one of these would be worth considering (or is there simply no proper alternative to a good old-fashioned iron)?

DigForVictory

We found a Corby trouser press at a car boot & it barely manages to get the school trousers tidy.

I have seen a roller thing for sheets but whether they need ironing can be discussed elsewhere.

I manage a compromise - there is a hand iron & the lads learned to use it at school age, then were allowed to stay up past bedtime if ironing. Suddenly ironing became popular & I got out of it...

neilmcl

If you have a lot of ironing then just get a decent steam generator iron, team that up with a half decent ironing board that you can use whilst seated and you should be sorted. It really isn't that hard of a job.

Neither hand-held garment steamers or a trouser press is an alternative solution to getting through a big load of ironing. The only other real alternative is to pay someone else to do it.

TELLIT01

The large ironing presses can do a really good job but they are bulky and heavy.

JuzaMum

I don't iron school uniform (feel free to judge me). If you hang it up properly as soon as it is washed it doesn't need it. The modern school uniforms are easy care.

ka7e

I don't iron anything! Son's work shirts are dried on hangers, just about everything else is non-iron or dried and folded nicely for storage.

suki1964

I have a press and its fantastic for bigger items such as sheets, it can do shirts etc, but to be honest its a bit of a faff

A steam generator iron is the way to go. I have a swan, cost about £50 , and I wizz through the ironing in no time at all

With delicate items I hang on a hanger and use the iron upright, not touching the clothes, just blasting it with steam and the creases just fall out

coffeehound

There’s also that great technique with a steam generator iron where you hold up a trouser leg or shirt sleeve by the cuff and shoot steam upwards through the open end. The garment sort of balloons up and all the creases fall out. Wish I’d had it for my difficult 1980s shirts . .

bris

If you find a solution to this problem, patent it and you will be the worlds next Billionaire.