Iron On

Ironing
I hate ironing my clothes. My parents in America will be the first ones to agree to it. I feel like sometimes you have the potential to iron more creases into the clothes. In America my philosophy was if it was that wrinkled, one more washing would fix the problem. Right before I left, my sister made me being lazy about ironing even easier by purchasing one of those dryers that gets all the wrinkles out for you. Just put in your wrinkled clothes and poof! Magic! They were all gone.
Here I do not have that luxury. I wash my clothes in a oversized bowl and hang them to dry in the sun. This usually creates wrinkle free clothing. However, life kicks in and sometimes I do get a few wrinkles to cause me to iron.
I feel as though Samoans have an obsession with ironing. An outfit that had been taken care of with no creases at all will be ironed to be sure that person is looking their absolute best each day. This has caused me to cave under peer pressure to iron my clothes when I they probably look as good as they are going to get. I sometimes will rush to get ready and out the door, to avoid the few minutes of spending time with the iron.
This morning I picked my puletasi off the clothes line outside to wear to school. It looked impeccable thanks to my amazing job of washing. No creases, or even marks from where the clothes pins were. I was ready to get ready for school.
I walked back into the house and my mom was ironing her outfit and my sister’s school uniform. “Aumai,” she said so I passed her my puletasi and she ironed it.
I examined the clothing after, it honestly looked the same as when it began.
Other people who live with Samoans have the same issues. One of my friends had a mom who insisted on ironing every t-shirt before she would go out to exercise.
To me ironing seems like a waste of time when your clothes already look good. But I guess since I will be here for another year and a half, I need to cave and start embracing the ironing.
Besides, even in the heat of Samoa, nothing does feel better than hot clothes off the iron. It reminds me of those cold winter days (Even though it is summer in America, we still get to have our winter reports from our nearby neighbor of New Zealand.) in which I would make sure to grab clothes straight out of the dryer to get the extra warmth.
Iron on.