Flat-Out Fun

Though it's becoming less commonplace in today's lax office dress codes, some men still need to (or want to) go to work in dress shirts. Of course, this means ironing the shirts. Either everyday, or in batches on a regular basis. For some of us, this can amount to a good chunk of time, and we'd do anything to reduce that.

So the question for today is, how do you iron your (or your man's) shirts? And tips and tricks to share with us? For my procedure, I have my French 12 teacher to thank; she somehow got to talking about it one day, and detoured our class topic into the "proper" method for ironing shirts. I'll recap it as best as I can here.

• Sleeves. (The sleeves are the mostly likely to get rumpled up when you wear it, even before you get to work, so we start with those.) Follow the inner-arm seam to get the crease straight. Pleats in the sleeve area suck bigtime -- I hate those.
  
• Cuffs. Undo the button and open up the cuff to get it nice and flat. Do the inside, then the outside.
  
• Back. Do the back, starting from the shoulder line down to the bottom hem. I like to "hook" it off the wide end of the ironing board to keep that shoulder taut, and I do the "far" side of the back first, so that when you're done that, you shift the shirt away from you, so as not to get kicked or trampled by your legs/feet. And if you have a pleat in the center back, I recommend doing it after the rest of the back is already ironed.
  
• Front. Next is the front -- one side, then the other. I dodge the iron point between the buttons while keeping the shirt tight with the other hand. I iron the breast pocket from the bottom up, so it doesn't stretch out that "lip". I also don't worry too much if I don't get the side waist area perfect, since that's going to get wrecked as soon as I wear the shirt too.
  
• Shoulder. Sometimes I do another once over on the shoulders (because they're kind of the vertical parts overhanging while your shirt is flat). Depends on how they look.
  
• Collar. The last part is the crisp, clean collar we like on those shirts. I flip it up (please remove the collar stays) and iron it from the "underside", the side that will be hidden when you're wearing it. Then I fold it down, and blast some steam on the folded seam. This is kind of tricky, while taking care not to wrinkle the freshly-ironed parts of the shirt.
  
• Hang it and admire your work. There. 1 down, 4 to go.

The main idea is to iron the parts in reverse order of "crisp importance", because the first parts you iron will be slightly wrinkled as you move the shirt around to get everything else. So best parts last. The collars get most noticed, so you want to make sure they're last. Sleeves are wrinkled anyhow, so you may as well get them done first.

Now, I make no claims that this is the fastest way. It's just the way I was shown.

About.com and eHow seem to have different variations on it. It probably takes me between 10 and 15 minutes to rattle through a shirt, depending on pleats and material. Of course, the easy way out is to buy one of those steamers that those clothing stores have. Or a lazy suzie. Or one of these blow-up ironing things. But they don't get you those nice creases on the sleeves.