I Love My Ironing Board

I Love My Ironing Board
By Liz LaMac

Most of my life, l have lived in large houses. When I was five years old we moved from Parkersburg, West Virginia to Spencer, West Virginia. We didn’t have a bath room or an out-house where we lived in Parkersburg, but we had a big house. In Spencer we lived in a ten room house. After I was married and we had children of our own, we raised them, part of the time, in parsonages, but the place they called home was our 23 room mansion in Huttonsville, West Virginia. We named our home, the Hutton House, and it is in the National Registry of Historical Homes. Of course there have been a few small spaces in the course of time.
Later, because of our involvement in Country Music and entertainment, we moved to Nashville, TN. We spent many happy years in Nashville and when my husband became ill, we moved back to West Virginia. We bought his Mother’s 100 year old home. Together we turned it into the Vintage House Bed and Breakfast. We didn’t get to enjoy the house very long. His cancer worsened. And soon after that I was living at Warm Hearth villages alone.
What I am trying to say here is this: I am used to living in homes with plenty of room. I have always had a laundry room or a place in the basement set up to wash and iron the clothes. I love to leave the ironing board up. I love to pick out something to wear and run in and press it.
When I moved to Warm Hearth that all changed. There was no place for an ironing board. I tried leaving it up in the small kitchen. That didn’t work. I bought one of those silly little ironing boards that hang on the back of the door, and let down for you to iron. No good. Something had to be done. I have even been guilty of folding and putting away table napkins without ironing them. I have also worn jeans and tops out in public ‘not ironed.’

Then last week my daughter Sheree bought me a book about prettying up your home, and arranging it to suit your own needs. Not having a real house anymore – nothing in the book applied to me. But I kept leafing through it. I saw an ironing board sitting in a hall. That picture stuck in my mind. I don’t know why. I don’t have a hall that big.
The other night I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the book, the picture of the ironing board in the hall and the statement – make your home work for you. So here I was wide awake at three o’clock in the morning. I was thinking, I know this apartment is no bigger that a postage stamp, but I want a place to leave up my ironing board set up. So in my mind I went over every inch of the apartment, trying to find a place. There wasn’t any.
Wait! I said to myself, Wait a minute! Maybe, just maybe, I have a spot for the ironing board. I sat up in bed. What if, yes, just what if the storage closet is big enough for the ironing board? If it is, then it will solve two of my problems. I could leave my ironing board set up and I would have a place for my linens. I jumped out of bed and ran to get the measuring tape. First, I measured the ironing board. Then I ran to the storage closet and measured the length of it. It was a perfect fit. There was a slight problem. The storage closet was packed. And besides that, there was a clothes rod close to the door, and when you opened the door the coats were right in your face. You had to part them and squeezed through to get anything out of the closet.
I wanted a place to iron more that I wanted a place to store stuff. I was going to give it a try. Soon as morning came I went down to the second floor and asked Arnold Meadows if he could take the clothes rod, from the front of the closet, and put it down under the shelves at the back of the closet. Arnold said he could move it and he did just that. He moved the rod to the back of the closet and under the shelves. Now the rod could be used to hang a few clothes on as I ironed them. Then I would put them away.
All the coats were still piled upon my bed. For now, I had to leave them there. I started taking the other things out of the storage closet. I threw away stuff I didn’t need and I gave away many things. It was slow going. I had to sleep on the couch for three nights. But it paid off. Things started going into place. I took all the table clothes, table napkins and dollies out of the large buffet drawers and put them in the ironing room on the shelves. I took the summer clothes that were hanging in the bedroom closet, and I folded them and placed them in the buffet drawers. Now there was room to hang up some of the jackets.
Items moved from one spot to another. The free standing shelves in the storage closet were placed in the bath room. The bathroom shelve went beside my desk in the bedroom. Now they held notebooks and paper. Soon it all started felling in place.
And suddenly, wham- the ironing board went up. And you won’t believe it until you see it: in my tiny apartment I have a room just for linens and for ironing. My ironing board stays up all the time. I can walk in and iron any time I feel like it. Then walk out and close the door. I may be prejudiced, but I think I have the prettiest ironing room in the Warm Hearth Village apartments. However that may be, I love my ironing board.