Reducing ironing
Ironing uses electrical energy, so reducing it reduces energy consumption.
Wear clothes that do not need ironing
Wear clothes that do not need ironing at all. Examples:
– Denim pants and shirts.
– Corduroy pants and shirts
– Cheese cotton shirts.
After washing, hang out clothes on the clothes line on hangers.
Reduce ironing
When ironing shirts, don’t iron the area that gets tucked into the pants and goes below the waist. Nobody is going to see this anyway. Also, if the back looks OK, don’t bother to iron it. When you lean against a chair it is going to get crumpled anyway.
When ironing pants that sit tight on the hips, don’t iron the area above the crotch. It is anyway going to mould itself to your body shape.
Savings : With a typical 750 W iron, if you save 15 minutes of ironing a day using these tricks, that’s
68 kWh a year, or 55 kg. of CO2.
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Me
Who am I ?
Mechanical engineer, foodie, environment nut, animal lover, live in Bangalore.
Identifying features : Bald head, sexy legs caused by cycling, paunch (that keeps going up and down based on its mood, but is one friend I can depend upon to be with me till the day I die).
My vehicle is a bicycle, and I also use public transport - buses and autos.
My parents always encouraged us to avoid ironing because they grew up in poor families and had several ideas to live economically.
One such idea with avoiding ironing is: Dust the washed (wet) clothes well and hang it on the stand/rod to dry. Spreading them out well will dry the clothes without crease. Once dried fold them immediately and it looks like a well ironed cloth.
My uncle (70 something) wears mainly cotton dhotis and has been following this throughout his life with all his clothes. He is very particular about his clothes and wants them to look ironed like at all times. Cotton dhotis are tough to make look ironed when actually they are just folded well.
Manually drying and folding is a little effort and time consuming, but it is also a good way exercise the arms.
Part folding clothes neatly and keeping it under the mattress is an old trick. Works for some materials very well.
This is a great idea