By Ali Siemens (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: January 25, 2012
“And he lays the shirt down. I believe that it is 100 per cent cotton. He’s reaching for his tool of choice. It appears to be pre-heated… he’s going for it, here we have it folks, we have someone who is ironing.”
Commentating on household chores seems like something that was once used as a torture device. No one wants to listen to someone talk about how their experience was when they dusted their venetian blinds earlier that morning. Perhaps we have been taking the wrong approach to chores, because clearly there have been new developments that have literally made ironing and other chores extreme.
According to Wikipedia, before Extreme Ironing became “mainstream,” the premise of making mundane activities birthed from the American stoner rock band, Monster Magnet. The band released a video of them taking part in monotonous tasks while on top of an asteroid, which essentially reinvented the task as “extreme.” However one wants to argue the birth of Extreme Ironing, it is the make-up of the art that makes it truly unique.
Essentially, if a person wants to take part in the sport of Extreme Ironing (EI) all they need are a few key pieces of equipment. For starters, you need something to iron, an ironing board, an iron, a camera and perhaps someone to take a picture of you in the act. From here, Extreme Ironing allows for the imagination to run wild. Whether you are taking part in the sport on your own, or you chose to elect an entire team, how extreme you choose to be is up to your comfort level. In the past, participants have been known to climb to the top of mountains to iron, dive deep into the ocean and eradicate wrinkles or scale buildings in order to steam-rid their creases and crinkles.
Maybe this is the approach parents should take when trying to implement the gold-star chore chart?
Essentially, this extreme sport is only good in theory (or not at all). Although there seem to be a lot of people who praise the idea of its extremisms, the task of ironing is completely overlooked. The last time I checked, the top of Everest doesn’t have an outlet, and if you try and submerge an iron while plugged in, bad things happen. Most sports require a winner, and in this situation, I am not sure if the winner is based on how extreme the contestant is being, or how wrinkle-free their clothing is after they complete the task.
At the end of the day, we could really turn any household chore, or any chore at all into something extreme. As cool as it may be to get a picture of yourself ironing your favorite blouse on a cliff, I don’t think it is all that practical. Perhaps I will try my hand at Extreme Ironing when I feel like making my chores more exciting, although I am afraid I might just end up with a burned hole in my shirt and a picture framed in my living room that will be a story worth listening to.
Considering there are no real winners, I will take the liberty of declaring myself the extremist ironer ever.
