How to Avoid Ironing

Love linen, but hate to iron? Maybe your shirt actually looks more wrinkled after your have tried ironing it. Of course it helps to have a casual work environment or work from home. But if you don't, you may be able to work through this issue using your clothes dryer, your steamer or a wardrobe of carefully chosen, wrinkle-free clothing.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Dryer
• Steamer
• Discipline and ability to sift through wardrobe and discard items
• New wardrobe budget
• Dry cleaners

1. For fastest and easiest results, toss your clothing item in the dryer on high heat for 10 minutes. Remove and immediately fold or wear. Generally speaking, all clothing needs to be immediately removed from the dryer and folded in order to reduce or eliminate wrinkles.

2. Try a steamer. For stubborn clothing items, move the wand over the hanging clothing item to ensure a quicker, smoother and less frustrating experience.

3. Wash and fold. Dry cleaning (environmentally friendly, if possible) means wrinkle-free clothing until the next dry cleaning. This is popular among the professional crowd but can be expensive as a habit, especially if the clothes will only be worn once in between trips to the dry cleaners. Wash and fold, available at most dry cleaners, is a less expensive option for normal fabrics.

4. For a more radical alternative, purge your wardrobe of the most-likely-to-wrinkle items. Donate them to a thrift store. Stick with the other pieces, and complement them with new wrinkle-free offerings (such as Dockers pants) that WILL NEVER WRINKLE. This kind of selective shopping will reduce stress in your life if you seriously can't stand to iron.

Tips & Warnings

• Some fabrics simply have to be ironed; for those who refuse to iron linen, there may be no practical alternative but to try the neighborhood dry cleaners.