The Irony Of It All

                                  NEVER TRY TO IRON A CUPCAKE

My iron is self-cleaning – a lot of newer models are. But what does that actually mean?  Late at night when everyone’s  asleep the iron jumps down off its board pal and hops over to the cabinet, pulls out the sole plate cleaner and a plush rag and wipes  itself  off?  Not hardly, although that would be nice if it did.   And if your iron is  NOT “self-cleaning” perhaps the iron fairies sneak into your home late at night with iron cleaner and take care of it while you’re fast asleep? 

Nope – cleaning an iron takes human interaction – and preferably on a regular basis.  Like many items we may own and use we are supposed to maintain/clean them on a “regular basis”.  In Florida we change our AC filters every 60 days (sure we do).  We change the oil in our cars every 5000 miles (yeah right).  That smoke alarm battery should be swapped out every 6 months (opps, I’m late).

And then there’s doctors.  How often do we see them? Fortunately for regular “maintenance” a doctor or dentist will normally schedule your next appointment before you leave the office.  Most offices will have a system that even reminds us of the appointment a few days in advance.  Easy!

So why does my iron look like I tried to iron a cupcake???  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t intentionally neglect my iron. In fact, I wipe the sole plate with special iron cleaner every few weeks.   I also use steam, a lot of steam.  I love nothing more than steaming a bias edge into submission.  Steam is also a great way to get those bulky, overlapping seams to lay flat and corners to stay crisp. When working with wool or hand embroidery steam is wonderful for bringing out dimensional features that would be lost if flattened with traditional ironing.  After all, using steam regularly keeps the jets clean and the iron free of gunk, right?  Wrong!

In order to “self-clean” my iron I was supposed to use the button labeled “self-clean”.  But I didn’t – ever – thus the cupcake appearance.  I imagine it was building up for quite some time until finally my iron just gave up and spued forth years of mucky, yucky, nasty goo.  Lucky for me it happened when I was steaming the back side of a wool applique project so none of the nastiness got on my quilt.  Talk about a close call!!  It also caused me to use some very specific adult language - which brought my husband running to see what had occurred.  His first instinct was to say “gross, do we need to go buy you a new iron”?  As tempting as that was, I didn’t think I should have to spend a ton of money replacing an iron that cost a ton of money and is only 3-4 years old. 

Gotta love the internet and those kids who grew up with the world at their fingertips (even if they only type with their thumbs).  My Gen Y child immediately got on her phone and started searching for an explanation.  It took her less than a minute to ask “mom, do you ever push that button that says “self-clean”??   Rowenta self-cleaning function   Smarty pants!

If you “self-clean” your iron regularly I suppose the self-clean function will work just fine.  If you haven’t EVER used that function it may take a little more than just pushing that button to get the iron truly clean.  Because my iron was in such sad shape, we filled the water tank with a solution of 50-50 water to vinegar ratio - not once, not even twice but three times before the iron finally stopped oozing out the nasty stuff.

My iron is good as new!  When was the last time you “self-cleaned” yours?