The best lazy way to iron your shirts

One of the best advantages of having your own blog is that you can talk about anything you want - well, almost anything perhaps

It's sunny outside, 34 C on my terrace, and me and my wife were doing the laundry and hanging everything out to dry. I really enjoy that exercise as I can't completely sit still when it's as hot at this, and the clothes retain the laundry smell and get that crispy touch that's lost in the dryer. E.g. the towels are stiff and a little rough even, I'd love to have fresh towels like that every day

Alas, that goes for my shirts too - they are wrinkled like a Sharpei


Can't wear shirts like that to your work, you have to iron them. It takes a while to iron a shirt, it takes me 10-15 minutes a shirt to get it neat enough and almost perfect. I am always amazed that certain creases have to be sprayed and ironed a few times before they go away.
On a side note, I don't enjoy ironing - it is rather pointless as a perfect 10 shirt quickly degrades to a 6 or 7 and 5 shirts a week means 60 minutes of ironing a week. Unless you buy 20 shirts and spend 4 hours once a month in one big ironing frenzy, that would mean a repetitive task that can't be postponed nor avoided.
So I've thought about alternative ways, and came up with an almost perfect one - it's not a 10, but certainly an 8+

Like I said above, drying clothes outside gives them that crisp touch that's lost in the dryer - that made me think. In effect, clothes from the dryer aren't always "equally creased" - sometimes they're smoother, sometimes they're looking like even a young Sharpei

I decided to assume that the intensity of creasing got caused by the volume of laundry, and put that to the test. Today, I collected 5 washed and dried shirts from the laundry, took the spray bottle, and sprayed them wet all over, hitting all creases I could see.
Then, I took the 5 shirts, and put them together in a completely empty dryer.
I set the program to 45 minutes, and went outside to bake in the sun

When the dryer was finished, I went upstairs and anxiously opened the door - what would I see?
The shirts came out perfect - all creases were gone. The fabric was different for most, and even my biggest crease-sensitive shirt didn't have a single crease. Was I happy? Heck yeah!
Especially the sleeves that always wrinkle so quickly, were perfectly smooth and crease-free. I was impressed: in stead of ironing for an hour to get these shirts this way, I had done it in 45 minutes and with a total effort of maybe 5 minutes.
Next time of course I'll keep the shirts separate so I don't have to make them wet again, and save myself the trouble of handling them twice

So if you like to have crease-free shirts but detest ironing and can't find anyone else to do it for you, you know what you'll have to try and find out for yourself - I tell you, you'll be pleased with the result. If not, you can always still iron them