Ironing Dress Pants and Keeping Them That Way

Hiring out for laundry service is expensive and unnecessary once you have the right tools and techniques in place in your household. Today, the focus will be on keeping dress pants wrinkle-free and storing them so they will look their best each time you wear them.

A first purchase would have to be an iron. Most irons are very similar with some possessing extra safety features such as automatic shutoff, a helpful addition for busy lifestyles. While shopping for an iron, you might as well pick up an ironing board while you’re there; they are quite inexpensive and do a better job than the dining room table, while being quite a bit more durable and resistant to the scalding heat of your iron. After getting home with your purchases, set up your ironing board, adjusting its height to your liking. It always serves you well to read instructions of all home appliances, so take the time to read your iron’s instruction booklet, especially if this is your first. After perusing your iron’s instruction booklet, you will most likely want to fill it accordingly with water and plug it into a nearby outlet. Make sure you have adequate slack in the electrical cord for ironing activity, and its cord extends out of the path of your foot traffic or your family’s. Check the instruction tag inside the waistband of your pants. There is often a designated temperature for ironing and other tips for proper care of the pants. Some pants have tags that proclaim, “do not iron”; if so, don’t. Set your iron to the recommended temperature and allow it adequate time to warm up, making sure it is resting on its stand or heel, as not to burn or scald the ironing board. After the iron has warmed up, lay your pants on the ironing board lengthwise, with one leg on top of the other. The pants should be folded perfectly in half to ensure the success of this process. Fold one leg up and over the waist, leaving the bottom leg exposed and ready for ironing. Iron this exposed leg, working your way down from top to bottom, slowly, in a circular motion, making sure to steam out the wrinkles. You can place a towel on top of the leg, if so desired, to make sure the pant leg is protected from the direct heat of the iron. After finishing the bottom leg, fold the top leg back over, making sure the inseams of the legs match up, and iron it in the same fashion. Turn the pants over, and repeat the process for the other side of each leg.

You have now successfully ironed your dress pants, but if you’re not going to wear them immediately, storage will be an issue. Specially designed hangers are available to keep those wrinkles out and avoid the middle crease made by cheap wire hangers. Choose your hanger, and neatly hang your pants lengthwise; your pants will be wrinkle-free and ready to wear when you need them.

About the Author: Ron Maier is Chief Executive Officer of onlygarmentracks.com, leading provider of garment racks and clothing racks. For information go to www.onlygarmentracks.com.

Making Your Closet “Livable” Again

Do you ever look in your closet and have trouble deciding what to wear on a given day? Let’s try that again, everyone has trouble deciding, but do you have trouble finding what you want to wear? Organization goes a long way, in life and in closets. If you’re like most Americans, the floor of your closet is covered with assorted overflow: mismatched shoes, neckties, hats, etc. All of these articles need to be picked up, organized, and displayed in such a way so that you will actually pick them and wear them. If they’re not pickable or wearable, get them outta there!

After emptying your closet of the articles that don’t have a mate, are extremely tattered and unwearable, or just don’t belong, it’s time to get to the real business at hand: organization. Though some of the reason your closet is in such disarray might be attributed to pure laziness, much of it is probably due to apathy and purely a feeling of “where do I begin?” Let’s begin by getting all of those horrible free, flimsy, and somewhat useless dry cleaner wire hangers out of your closet. These hangers are prone to spilling their contents to the closet floor because of their poor design and overall weak tensile strength. Hangers have come a long way, are more affordable than ever, and are essential to keeping your clothes off the floor and wrinkle-free. Hangers come in all shapes and sizes, and there is a perfectly sized and designed hanger for every article of clothing in your closet. Assorted hangers, usually for sale in multiples but available in singles as well, are readily available online or at brick and mortar retailers near you. A good way to arrive at the styles of hangers necessary to bring your closet back to life is to take a look at its contents. Do you have a lot of slacks or dress pants that need to be organized? Multi-pant hangers that can hold four or more pair at a time might be for you. Is your tie collection most often spread all over the closet floor? Vertical hangers just for ties are available that at the same time save you space and display your ties appealingly so that you can find the particular one you want when you need it. There are even hangers for all those pesky belts that seem to make it to the closet floor as well.

So we’ve arrived at a conclusion, the real reason your closet is unlivable is you don’t have the tools necessary to keep it breathing. A small investment in hangers and closet organizational accessories is just the remedy to resuscitate that closet of yours and breathe life into your wardrobe again!

About the Author: Ron Maier is Chief Executive Officer of onlygarmentracks.com, leading provider of garment racks and clothing racks. For information go to www.onlygarmentracks.com.