Some Prefer the Mobility of the Everyday Ironing Board

Her friends laugh at her, but Jeannie Pesner of Villa Park doesn’t care. She insists on ironing her family’s clothes, right down to her youngest son’s tiny T-shirts. “I don’t want him to go to preschool in a wrinkled shirt.”

Pesner spends four hours a week ironing. To break up the monotony, she moves her ironing board around to several rooms--the living room, master bedroom, sometimes even the laundry room.

Portability is key, she says. That’s why she hasn’t considered a built-in ironing board.

“I have three children--Katelyn, who is 12, Jeffrey, who is 8 1/2 and Zack, who’s 4 1/2--and I iron all their clothes. I also iron for my husband, Barry, and me, but only our clothes. My stepmother irons sheets and towels, but I don’t.

“I have to do something else while I’m ironing. Sometimes I talk on the phone but I can only hold the phone cradled in my neck for about 15 minutes before my neck starts to hurt. Most of the time I watch TV. I put in a kids’ movie to occupy my kids’ attention while I’m working, or sometimes I’m ironing in the laundry room with just the radio on.

“If I only have a half-hour to iron, I set the board up in the laundry room and I have a little race with myself. I play a game to see how many items I can iron in a half-hour. I usually can do about 15 pieces.

“My husband keeps saying that I should have an ironing board installed in the wall in the laundry room, but those boards can’t be moved around and they’re usually smaller. I like the full-size ironing board.

“Maybe it would be OK to have a little one in the wall to use for touch-ups--to take out a little wrinkle that would otherwise bother me all day.

“I split up my weekly ironing into two sessions of about two hours each. It’s too much to stand there for longer than two hours. I’ve tried sitting, but I can’t get the full arm weight on the iron unless I stand.”

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