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Do you iron your clothes?
I can't imagine anyone doing this regularly but at the same time, people at work have wrinkle-free clothes!
I hear people take their clothes to the laundromat to avoid doing so, but that seems like it'll get expensive.
How do you manage to keep your office clothes neat and presentable?
No I have a steamer if they’re really bad, otherwise I’ll throw the item in the drier for a couple of minutes and the wrinkles relax.
+ in the drier with a damp sock/rag does wonders.
(handful of ice cubes)
When I used to travel a lot for work, I would hang them in the bathroom with me while I took a hot steamy shower.
I don't separate clothes when washing. Everything goes in at the same temperature. White stuff mixed in with colored stuff. Everything gets into the dryer. Nothing gets ironed. Nothing gets folded. So much time is saved! The only piece of clothing that gets any special attention is my cashmere sweater which I hand wash in (slightly) warm water and mild soap then press in a rolled up towel to dry.
This is what i do now for the most part too - except i have more woolens that need extra attention that i hand wash whenever i have enough for a batch.
I hear separating whites & colors isn't as necessary anymore bc dyes are getting better at not bleeding.
Edit: wait you don't even fold??
Yeah, same. I do specifically purchase clothing to support this habit, though. I wear almost exclusively cotton shirts and cotton twill pants which will—in principle, anyway (don't get me started)—hold up to robust laundering.
In principle I do fold my clothing, though. (I don't want to talk about in practice. =P)
Yeah I'm pretty much all cotton as well with a few synthetic pieces.
I taught my daughter to separate her whites and colors when she first started doing her laundry over a year ago. One time I happened to be in the laundry room while she was doing her laundry, and I saw her just chucking everything in mixed together. I warned her it might discolor her white stuff, but she said, "I always do it this way and it's fine."
I guess between modern dyes, modern fabrics, and modern detergents, this is one of those things like light bulbs being hot that the younger generations will experience completely differently.
I can't quite bring myself to completely abandon it. I wash all my black stuff together so it doesn't get linty and I can use the woolite dark on it, then do a load of my nicer collared shirts, then an "everything else" load. I might have some trauma from a whole year of wearing a pink gym uniform (in Texas in the 90's) because my dad accidentally put a red towel in the load.
Do you hang them instead of folding? If not, aren't your clothes wrinkly all the time?
No. And they are not. I can share pics later
if it’s meant to be ironed, i iron it. i love ironing and i want crisp clothes, not just smooth ones.
This is my approach, too. Certain materials just look so much better after they're ironed super smooth, and takes an outfit from fine to polished.
That said, I don't particularly enjoy ironing, I just feel it's a valuable enough step to spend my time on.
everybody just looks better in pressed clothes. I've got my ironing stuff in a back room set up all the time. If I had to put it away each time, I'd probably not enjoy it so much... or I'd do it all at once. I really enjoy it as part of my day, though.
How often do you iron & how long does it take typically?
If i had an actual laundry room where i could leave out the ironing table, i would definitely feel more open to doing it regularly.
i iron every day because I like it. For a shirt, undershirt, and pants -- not even five minutes. My iron takes about a minute or so to heat up, then I'm off to the races. Full steam for cotton, medium steam for everything else that isn't synthetic. If you do have a lot of synthetics (polyester etc), no steam.
If you ironed once a week, you could crank through it in no time. The other important thing is storing your clothes properly -- e.g. savile row fold for pants, not hanging sweaters / softer fabrics (it ruins the shoulders over time), etc.
No. I never could understood why I'd care about it. If it's really bad I hang it in the bathroom while I take a shower so I can essentially steam it.
I don't. Most of my clothes have stretch to them, because that's what plus sized women's close have. And they lose their wrinkles in the dryer or while hanging.
I don't really care about wrinkles and don't consider it an indicator of "care" or "class" or anything.
People should look how they want and that's fine.
I am plus sized (male) and recently had to switch to jeans with stretch in them due to some embarrassing rips. It feels weird because I've been wearing the same jeans for the last ... 25 years. But in terms of freedom of movement it has been amazing.
They're definitely more comfortable than non-stretchy jeans, though I'm curious if you still get decent sized pockets?
Wear what makes you feel good (with the caveat of not letting society make you feel bad)
The pockets are about the same as the old jeans. These are Lee Men's Extreme Stretch. My old jeans were the non-stretchy Lee Jeans. I was stable for a long time at the same waist are, but this year has gotten the better of me.
I don't know how big the pockets are, but in my dreams they hold a whole phone, at least an A series Pixel...( ╹▽╹ ) I can only hope someday.
I like the stretch personally, bodies are more likely to change over time than not, and the stretch is more forgiving IME.
Oh yeah, I definitely can put my pixel 8 in either the front or back pockets.
Also, this made me laugh:
https://youtube.com/shorts/MSK-WQ9DB8w
I have seen the holy land of infinite pocket jeans and lo it is only a vision from the heavens!
I only iron shirts. Or other clothes that would show really obvious creases if you didn't.
NOW MY MUM.
She irons underwear, socks, bed sheets, you name it!
My dad too. He irons his socks and banana hammocks. Says he enjoys doing it. Whatever floats your boat
Same here. Same with my mom too. Irons everything.
Yes. It's always weird to me when people are adamant that they don't. My family was struggling middle class immigrants, but my mom ironed when it was necessary. Slacks, nice shirts, khaki material. Parents thought me to take care of myself, so I do that too lol.
As for other stuff, I take it out of the dryer immediately so it doesn't wrinkle. I lay out shirts since I usually don't have time to fold them right away.
I only use dry cleaners for suits and tuxedos. I've never tried a steamer, but I don't think it would be a huge improvement for my situation.
If I'm wearing a suit to a wedding or something then yes, but not in my standard day to day
I spend about 30-45 minutes every Sunday afternoon/evening ironing clothes for that week. Sometimes I'll spend 5-10 minutes in the mornings to iron pants/shirts before work. It usually takes me 5-7 minutes per shirt/pants.
I work in a typical office environment where business casual is the dress code. For men, that means, slacks or chinos with button up shirts, and in colder months, we'll wear sweaters over our button up shirts. That kinda place.
I also own a couple of suits which I wear to weddings, funerals, job interviews, things like that. I take my suits to a local dry cleaners and pay them to clean and press my suit jackets and pants. These days it costs about $12 to clean and press a suit. Luckily I don't go to a lot of formal events (weddings, funerals, interviews) so I only spend maybe $36 a year on dry cleaning.
I don't particularly enjoy ironing but it's become a part of my weekly routine, similar to how I don't enjoy flossing but it has to be done.
The stuff that needs to be ironed, yes. Dress shirts, slacks, etc. If I have a t-shirt or sweater that has wrinkles from the way it was stored, I'd do a quick pass on those too, but that's not a matter of course. The objective is to avoid looking like I took my clothes out of a bottle, as my mom would say.
I'm guessing this is a generational thing since clothing styles and dress codes have grown more casual over time, but I don't get how/why anyone wearing formal or business attire daily would NOT be ironing their clothes with some regularity. When I worked in a business casual setting with a younger crowd (or at least younger than me), the staff marveled at the fact that my khakis had a crease everyday and they could tell I ironed my pants. I myself was aghast when I hired an assistant manager in his early to mid 30s, and for his first week, all his shirts had the crease lines from the folds from the store. I guess he didn't even wash them after buying them.
(The staff also marveled at the fact that my clothes always matched, color-wise... I had never previously paid much attention to how other men dressed but that made me realize how many people here don't actually coordinate their colors in some sensible way when they put together their outfits, and how often their colors clashed or their shoes didn't match. Women too!)
Really depends on the material, and the type of clothes.
Linen I usually just steam. Linen is supposed be wrinkly. It's part of the vibe. I wouldn't wear linen to like actual business casual or something. Linen is for pairing with shorts or casual trousers, being wrinkly is part of what makes it look breezy, effortless, and casual.
Cotton shirts, it depends on the collar. Sadly, I think that cotton collars really do need an iron to look presentable. Otherwise, for stand collars, I just steam it as well.
Pants, I rarely iron. Just steam, and sometimes they're not wrinkly enough to begin with.
I work blue collar so there are very low expectations on how put together I look and I love it. Also we work weird shifts all the time so if I look EXTRA disheveled then nobody really says much. One woman I work with says she enjoys not being expected to put makeup on to go to work and the idea of putting on makeup just to go to work (especially a non public facing job) blew my mind.
If I was going to some sort of event like a wedding or funeral then I *might* iron my stuff. Currently I don't have an ironing board though, we just have a relatively small wool pad that we use when ironing for sewing projects so doing a full ironing job would be tedious. Instead I try to just avoid wrinkles in the first place. I will only buy 100% wool dress pants; they don't wrinkle the same way and when you hang them up the wrinkles pull themselves out. For dress shirts I buy the more expensive wrinkle free ones and they are passable when you pull them out of the dryer but ironing them does still make them look... better, flatter, crisper?
Never have, never will. I do not own any formal clothes. I do not own an iron. I don't wear suits, I don't wear dress clothes. I actually sort of have a disdain for all of it. I try to navigate life in such a way that I am never put in a position that requires it
The dryer does enough of the work for me for the clothes I do wear and I do have a steamer that I typically use for other things, if I absolutely needed it for some reason. I don't dress up for weddings or funerals aside from casual button up (down?) shirt and jeans (which is as non-casual as i get)- though i also do not have the kind of life where i am going to these types of events almost ever
I don't iron clothes, but that is also because I never learned how.
In the past, I'd get away with the hot shower steam trick to get rid of wrinkles. I've not worked in a setting that had a strict dress code, a polo was always more than fine when I had to go in office, and I now work from home and I have ~2 meetings a week I attend where I need to have a proper shirt on. Otherwise it's just a singlelet/tank top or old shirt that probably has a few holes.
The few times I've needed something ironed my wife has done it for me, but I'll be learning how to iron in the near future. Schools here require uniforms and my kids are under 5 so the schools don't care that much if their uniforms are wrinkled, but once they get into primary school their uniforms will need to be properly ironed. I'll need to make sure they look presentable whenever my wife isn't home to help them out, and since I already do the laundry for our house I might as well iron as well.
Please get your kids non-iron shirts for school. It’s what my mum did for me (she hates ironing), and it will save you oodles of time and they look basically the same as any other shirt
Thanks for the recommendation! I'll have to see if the stores that sell uniforms here have any
No but I haven’t worn a shirt regularly in a looong time. Now that it’s only every once in a while, I enjoy ironing just the one I’d wear because it’s a little special.
I suppose it depends on your job and what the codes are. Maybe shirts are mandatory and so if you don’t wear one or it’s crinkled, it could disadvantage you. Or if it’s up to you and there are no expectations then join us and switch to clothes you don’t need to iron :)
Does the word "shirt" not mean most attire worn on the torso for you, or do you wear dresses primarily?
Just checking if you have a topless "chest out all the time" job, and no shade if so, or if there's a language barrier here.
I work as a lifeguard in a swimming pool, so topless ;)
Is what I’d say if it wasn’t a language barrier thing. By shirt I meant a dress shirt, the kind with buttons and optionally a tie. The tie maybe not so much anymore but many jobs expect people to dress that way in which case you can’t really not dress that way too. In which case ironing is an unfortunate requirement.
For me shirt implies buttons, t-shirt is not within the category “shirt” (yay language!).
Interesting, can I ask where you are?
This is not how I've ever heard language used in the US Midwest, "dress shirt" maybe but not just "shirt." I'm curious if translation, cultural (including corporate cultural) differences, or region are related
Dress shirt - Wikipedia
Seems to be a British English difference (and thus often the English learned in many countries where it's a second language)
East coast US, it depends on context. Generally, though, when people say shirt, they’re referring to something that’s open in the middle and buttons up.
Hence garment categories like the “shirt jacket” (see https://www.buckmason.com/collections/shirt-jackets?srsltid=AU7gw4WM341g03gwQiORhNV2F0RTFGNESUDx6RxR5awM7l0yCtfaWXGU for examples).
When someone wants to refer to a T shirt, they’d say T-shirt or just Tee.
Same for men's and women's clothes?
Maybe that's the larger disconnect.
Still never heard it before.
Women's button up tops used to be called blouses but now only certain styles are called blouses and most button up styles are also called shirts for women here in my experience.
Yeah blouses are a subset of shirt to me too, but not all women's tops would be blouses, even all button downs. The cut matters too.
(But where is "here" for you?)
Replied in the other chain before this one - Ireland.
I’m from the Midwest, and just wanted to chime in that your usage of “shirt” as “anything worn primarily as the only or base layer on the torso” is also how I use it.
Sure, you can get more specific “undershirt”, “tee shirt”, “dress shirt”, “polo”. But all of those are “shirts” to me.
I was just as intrigued as you when the OP here said they didn’t regularly wear shirts.
It just makes more sense to me to say "shirt" for the broad category and "specific type of shirt" for clarity rather than "shirt" for a subset of the shirt category and not have a different overarching term (top?) but have to use "specific shirt" for literally everything else.
But language is squishy, not built on logic!
I am indeed British, so that’s probably part of it, although I’m like 98% sure I’ve heard people use it similarly in the US (I work in tech where the assumed default is jeans and t-shirt and most of the people are on the West coast, and am male, if those add context!).
And yeah linguistically fuzzy even then. “Shirt” as a category, especially when considering dress codes like the post above? Totally clear delineation in my mind it implies buttons and a collar, wouldn’t question it. Friend is wearing a cool band t-shirt? “That’s an awesome shirt, did you get it at the gig?” is also totally clear in my mind and doesn’t sound weird at all referring to something without buttons or a collar. Once again, yay language!
[Edit] And now you’ve got me thinking about it, polos are a wildcard because they do have buttons and a collar but I wouldn’t default them into the shirt category for that specific example. But I might in other situations where t-shirts would still be implicitly excluded 🤔
But then only upper-body-wear gets this privilege of flexibility! Pants exclusively refers to underwear in British English (except if you’re from Liverpool, I think?), there’s no “pants category means underwear but you might compliment someone’s pants meaning outerwear” option there, you’d just be assumed to be American, ESL, or just weird if you have a local accent!
Don’t even get me started on bread rolls or small connecting alleyways between streets…
Yeah I am wondering if certain corporate cultures in the US have picked up/retained the usage. It's nice to know that shirt still gets sort of used on that overarching category way somewhat.
Would trousers be an overarching category for "long sleeved" bottoms or would they also only refer to dress clothes? Like sweats/sweatpants, jeans, khakis, slacks, or just the latter?
Trousers category definitely covers leg wear that isn’t shorts or skirts in general, so yeah actually I guess that’s the broad equivalent and it just doesn’t have the confusingly more specific meaning attached as well like shirt does! Although I guess I probably would say “jeans” or whatever if I were referring to a specific pair someone was wearing, so maybe it’s the opposite in that it sounds natural for the category as a whole but not for a specific instance? I think… maybe? It’s also occurring to me that I don’t even remember when I last had a conversation about trousers and the semantic satiation is really setting in.
Oh for sure "shirt" isn't a real word anymore
That would make the American usage the exception then =P
I never said otherwise? But I don't know if it's a Canadian thing, an AU/NZ thing, a thing in translation, a thing in other parts of the US from me, etc.
I am genuinely trying to understand, not making fun or anything.
Same here in Ireland.
I'm guessing shirt here means a button-down (shirt), as opposed to a button-up (shirt) or a t-shirt. That's what it specifically refers to in most places, I think.
Well I don't know the difference between a button down shirt and button up shirt either.
But I asked them their definition because to me "shirt" doesn't mean only one type. I'm also interested in your definitions, but you likely can't answer for them! When you say "most places" what do you mean?
I didn't grow up with that terminology, so I didn't know the difference either until I sat down and thought about it fairly recently, but it seems I still got it wrong! My rationale was that a button-down would be a shirt that typically got buttoned from top to bottom, and a button-up would be one that got buttoned from bottom to top (AKA a polo shirt)... but they apparently both refer to types of dress shirts differentiated by the collar.
AFAIK, "shirt" in most of the English speaking world refers to a dress shirt or a casual shirt with buttons all along the front, not a t-shirt or A-shirt or anything else.
I've never heard 'button down" before but having buttons hold down your collar makes sense I suppose. I don't button polos in a particular way and sometimes don't button them at all because they don't have buttons on femme clothing all the time.
"Shirt" for only dress shirts seems to be a British English difference. I'm curious whether it's a Commonwealth thing too, or where else this spreads.
ETA: never heard of an A shirt either.
It turns out that my laundry cadences matches very well with the release of Noah Caldwell Gervoa videos. So I took my clothes while watching one of his deep dives. Go figure.
Not usually, except for dress shirts that will be used formally (In-office, I make sure they're steamed and wrinkle free). If I need to look particularly crisp i will. For work I steam my stuff to remove wrinkles, maybe touch up creases, or iron if a shirt is particularly wrinkly. If I travel for work, I'll typically just use my portable steamer, or give it a blast from the iron in the hotel room to knock the travel wrinkles out.
I iron my work shirt every morning, I don't love the look of wrinkled clothes on me. They're not even nice shirts, just flannies, but they seem to just fit better and looks nicer if I've ironed them first. I also don't have a dryer so my clothes are often pretty wrinkly around the collar, arms, and buttons when they're finished drying.
No, but I do dry shirts on clothes hangers so that gravity takes care of most wrinkles. Same for pants actually, grab them by the ends and shake them out well to remove the biggest wrinkles, then hang them by the legs so that gravity does the work again.
The ironing hierarchy for me is wrinkle-prone natural fiber broadcloth, wrinkle-tolerant synthetics/blends, and knitwear.
Generally speaking, tee shirts, sweaters, sweats, etc. don't need ironing - they just get laid flat and folded after drying. Synthetics go on hangers, but don't need much minding to look smooth.
Jeans and khakis these days (women's, anyway) have enough elastane content to spring back into shape, and can generally be flattened and folded without wrinkling.
Broadcloth shirts and trousers other than soft flannel get ironed. Trousers look better on me with a sharp front crease, and shirt button plackets and collars should lay smoothly. However, most of those items are rarely-worn business formal attire. My business casual shirts and pants tend towards knit sweaters, polos, and easy-wearing blends.
Our household has not had an ironing board for >20 years and almost never used the thing back when we did own one.
It didn't take many years of arriving at work with my shirts wrinkled from the commute to me wondering why I bothered and switching up materials (and washing/drying habits) so it wasn't an issue anymore.
There are three things I ideally want ironed, shirts (including polo), khakis and sheets. Ironed sheets are just a matter of extra comfort so not everyone will want to do that. I could probably avoid most of the trouble if i changed to wearing only types of clothing that don't really need to be ironed, like t-shirts.
I wear buttoned shirts almost exclusively and I never iron them. The catch is that I wear them casually - untucked - so it doesn't matter if they look a bit disheveled. Beyond that, my body is a natural furnace so the actual wrinkles tend to release themselves after wearing the shirt for about an hour.
I kind of wonder if everyone is starching your shirts and then folding them or leaving them crumpled up or something. If you just hang them up they really shouldn't be wrinkled in the first place, as long as your closet isn't badly packed. Maybe it's bad polyester?
Over the years I've managed to put together a wardrobe that generally doesn't require ironing :D But also I don't have a job requiring corporate attire. For formal events, I have a set of kimonos and dresses which I designed myself, and I specifically chose a fabric type that drapes nicely and doesn't wrinkle.
The first thing I check when I'm shopping for clothes is how the fabric wrinkles. I crumple it in my hand to see how easily it creases.
Most of the fabric in my wardrobe is stretchy ("athleisure" is a great category for me), textured (such as seersucker or crepe), or "technical"/outdoorsy (some kind of ripstop).
My fashion style is probably something like lazy urban goth... it's mostly athleisure-ish / ninja-ish and almost all black. My husband usually says I'm dressed like I'm going to go assassinate someone :))
I never ironed anything before I started sewing. I just simply refused. Now I will iron fabrics as I sew and as I finish garments, but through this, I've learned the importance of ironing in how clothes fit and look. Most of my clothes don't need to be ironed, but I do iron the ones that do when they need it, and I press Mr. Tired's dress shirts and pants as they come out of the dryer before they get hung up to keep them from looking crunchy.
I iron anything that's visibly wrinkly, usually light colored t shirts show wrinkles worse than dark ones. I actively enjoy the process and find it relaxing. I think it's a little ironic people will say they don't have time for ironing, but will find time for scrolling short form video.
I don't really have office clothes, but I mostly don't iron my dress up clothes (I.e. not T shirts and sweat pants) either. The trick is to take the clothes out of the washer promptly and hang them to dry, then take them down when dry and hang them in the closet, also promptly. Leaving stuff crumpled up is how it gets wrinkles.
I was just looking into dryer options with steaming to make my life easier and I see this topic pop-up. So I'll take this time to ask if anyone has an LG 'Styler' and if that actually helps with wrinkles.