Tag Archives: Ironing

An “iron” allegedly

My darling chums often comment on what an inspiration I am when it comes to all things domestic. They often marvel at how I seem to always be well turned out, have a wonderfully balanced diet and don’t have rat droppings festooning PFPT Towers. Well, you lucky little tinkers, I’m going to share some of my closely guarded secrets with you, so that you too can gain status as something of a legend in the homestead, and with far less chance of getting jailed than if you use Martha Stewart as your role model.

Floor Hygiene
Sweeping, vacuuming and mopping are highly time consuming and thoroughly disheartening, for as soon as you’ve got the floor clean enough, some idiot comes along and throws their dinner all over it, bends down on one knee and proceeds to test out the exact standards of your housekeeping by scooping up bits of pea, potato and carpet with their fork. Well, in order to avoid such literal lunacy, I say leave your mop in its bucket, allow your Hoover to stay safely tucked under the stairs with your abandoned running shoes and banish your broom to the place where it gets wedged behind the fridge with the dust bunnies and invest in a decent pair of flip flops. Never again will you be afraid of catching syphilis from your own bathroom floor or suffer the torture of treading on a rogue Lego brick, for your feet are a good centimetre away from the putrid parquet below. You may need to muck out at least once every 9-12 months, or invest in waders.

Laundry
You’ll find that you only need to do half the amount of laundry and that your detergent will last twice as long, if you invest in a bottle of Febreze Fabric Refresher. I find the Classic scented one complements my Chanel No. 5 beautifully.

The Seven Minute Dinner
If I can’t eat it within seven minutes of entering my domicile, after a hard day of tormenting tourists, I don’t want to know. Now, this sounds like a recipe (excuse the pun) for disaster and take away menus but trust me, you can make any number of wonderfully wholesome meals in less time than it takes for the pizza parlour to answer the phone. Here are some of my favourites. Enjoy!

1. The PFPT Sandwich: Place sliced cheese between two pieces of bread, top with lashings of salad cream.

2. Broccoli Pasta á la PFPT: Steam broccoli in microwave, add to fresh pasta, top with lashings of salad cream.

3. PFPT Salad: Empty can of tuna onto bed of lettuce, top with lashings of salad cream.

4. PFPT Surprise: Toast, topped with lashings of salad cream.

5. PFPT Royale: Open champagne bottle, pour into glass, sink into oblivion. Not so much of the salad cream.

Making The Bed
My bed always looks immaculate and the sheets still bear the freshly laundered fragrance of one who has a housemaid (I don’t. Apparently you have to actually pay them real money) and the reason for this stems from a great love of watching late night cult classic films and drinking red wine, the combination of which generally causes me to lose consciousness on the sofa until around 04:00, at which time, I drag my wine stained carcass to bed and am only in it for 2-3 hours. Barely enough time to sully the pillow slips or besmirch the valance! Sure, the sofa may look like a gang of bohemian bordello madams have taken up residence on it, but that’s surely a very small price to pay for a bed that looks like it could satisfy that Princess and her pea-detecting buttocks, and only having to change your sheets every other year.

An additional tip for that perfectly made bed is a patented move I’ve developed, called The Breakfast Roll. When hunger for your breakfast drags you from your slumber, don’t merely rise from your pit like a plebeian! Straighten your duvet while still encased within and then quickly roll out one side of the bed, landing with catlike grace (or flat on your chops – your call), leaving the bed covers perfectly placed and ready for a matronly inspection

Ironing
Quite simply put, I don’t believe in ironing. I can’t explain it more explicitly than that. Much like religion, I know that it exists, I simply do not believe in it. How then, you astonished slaves-to-the-ironing-pile ask, do I not look like a tramp’s cravat? The answer is simple. As soon as my clothes have taken their turn about the washing machine, they find themselves strung up on a coat hanger and thrust straight into the wardrobe, where they obligingly drop all their creases like a frightened granny at gun point. If there happen to be particularly stubborn blouses, holding remorselessly to their kinks, I find that the insertion of a hot body and a sweaty train commute soon shifts them and no-one need ever know you use your ironing board as a handy place to store all your unopened utility bills.

Visitors
The main causes of domestic disharmony and kitchen chaos are visitors, children and pets; all of which should be kept outside. If you are unfortunate enough to have a ground floor dwelling, you will need to keep your curtains closed at all times to prevent them spotting you and expecting to be let in. If one such visitor should happen to break through the front line, it’s customary to keep an array of good quality beverages for them to choose from, even if you yourself don’t enjoy these items. A recent guest pointed out to me that the year “2010” on the coffee jar wasn’t a “fine vintage” but was in fact the use-by date. Apparently these things matter.

If all these tips still seem like too much hard work, I wholeheartedly recommend getting hired help. However, if you’re thinking of getting a cleaning wench to do your household chores, beware, they don’t take kindly to being tested. I once casually left my toenail clippings on the floor in an innocent quest to see how thorough her attention to detail was. Not that I’m saying she was put out about it, but I later found my extra-strong sleeping tablets in the box for the painkillers. I no longer have a cleaning wench.