Flat Out Foolish

I'm just finishing my ironing. I'm ironing sheets and pillowcases. Yes, you heard me right...I'm ironing sheets and pillowcases! I'm doing this... again... because my first visitor of the season just left and I've got another one coming today. Which really, as I think about it,  isn't a very good reason, is it? I mean, who irons sheets and pillowcases, anyway?

The French do, that's who! The French seem to iron everything and I seem to be integrating whether I like it or not. 


I had an ironing board in the states. And yes, I used it...to touch up my work clothes or iron the boys clean t-shirts that I'd left folded neatly on their beds and subsequently found laying in a heap on their floors. On Easter Sunday I would iron their only dress shirts, only to find that their arms had grown 3 inches since last Easter and it wasn't worth the bother.  My ex-pectorant used the iron to touch up his shirts between wearings, but he sent out his white collars and let somebody else do it.  Otherwise, the ironing board stood there and collected stuff. You know, just stuff. Like the kitchen table collects stuff, or the top of the washing machine by the back door collects stuff.

But it seems here in France, they're serious about their ironing. I am a femme de menage. This means, I'm a cleaning lady but I like the way it sounds in French better (do not mention this to the french government). I clean toilets, kitchens, bedrooms, fireplaces, and windows. And I do the ironing. The first time I went to my job, my boss opened a closet to reveal a stack of ironing like I've never seen before. I gasped. It's not like I don't know how to iron. When I was growing up, the bathrooms and the family ironing were my job and my mother carefully taught me how to do them both properly.  So apparently, returning to my childhood while here in France, I ironed washclothes, sheets, duvets, pillowcases, shirts, dresses, sweaters, leggings, nylon gym pants, old painting clothes and JEANS. Yes, jeans! In fact, I ironed a mountain of towels as well, which she later told me wasn't necessary...they just happened to be in the same closet. But still...washlclothes? Paintclothes?

When I see students moving in or out of their flats, there is always an ironing board involved. I'm not sure that my sons have ever owned an ironing board or an iron! My apartment is furnished and, of course, it came with all the equipment to do my ironing as well. I have since improved my equipment because I found a really nice, practically new iron (aside from the fact that someone obviously dropped it and it leaks...but only in a certain position) in the dumpster. It’s a plain, regular old iron. I point this out because when it comes to ironing, the French are not messing around. This contraption is very common here.

It's called a centrale vapeur. I don’t even know what it is but I hope when my heart stops, I will be here in France. Most certainly some well-meaning stranger will be able to defibrulate me with this sucker.

French artists seem to love ironing as well. Or rather, they like to paint women ironing. Obviously an interesting subject that Edgar Degas especially loved. This is just one of his many.

But Pablo Picasso, 

Louis Boilly 

and Armand Desire Gautier

got their hands in the picture as well.

 In the picture, yes, but I imagine not in the ironing. When I do the ironing I look more like Picasso's version than Boilly's lovely maiden.

Not to say that men don't iron here as well. In fact, I noticed that the champion of the Fer d'Or, a national ironing contest sponsored by Phillips Company, always seems to have a male champion. This time a Parisian barman. 

The strange thing is that I don't really mind this job. And there is something really heavenly about sleeping on freshly line dried, ironed sheets (not having dryers has a lot to do with the necessity of ironing). Okay, so I only do my pillow cases and the tops of my sheets. But the old linen sheets that I've been buying at the brocantes simply must be ironed. They just must. And of course, the linens for visitors. But I'll be damned if I'm going to iron jeans...or leggings! Anything that has to stretch that tight doesn't need to be ironed.

The assimilation process continues. I noticed today that my medicine cabinet is starting to look very French....as in...full to bursting. But that's another post.

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