Inspired by [gizmo]'s "Iron in' vaders", another idea to take some of the boredom out of an everyday household chore.
I'm thinking of a hovercraft-style skirt - preinflated or foam-filled - and little steam jets for locomotion. I'm not sure if a normal iron would develop enough pressure under the skirt to allow hovering or not, so we may need a jet(s) there too. And as the iron isn't exactly touching the clothes we may have to call it a steamer instead, but hey this is the HB.-- phoenix, Dec 12 2001 You can easily bake this by marrying someone in the armed forces. A couple of my mates are ex-soldiers and army training seems to have so broken their spirit that they actually enjoy doing the ironing. Very scarey!-- DrBob, Dec 12 2001 Well, compared with crawling in mud, killing people, and being called a pansy by a loud gentleman with a moustache, ironing probably is enjoyable.
The problem with the idea is that to do ironing, you generally have to move the clothes around as well as the iron. Maybe if we made the ironing board remote control as well.-- pottedstu, Dec 13 2001 The clothes' labels could contain a tag that could be read that includes the recommend way to iron the article of clothing. This way the iron and ironing board could be set on automatic.-- Aristotle, Dec 13 2001 Stationary iron, but remote-controlled clothes?-- angel, Dec 13 2001 angel: One way to do remote-controlled clothes would be have a thin, heat-resistant robot put the clothes on and act as the ironing board for a stationary iron.-- Aristotle, Dec 13 2001 Going back to your previous anno, you could install a special thread into each item of clothing to control the iron, so it would start with the collar, then do the cuffs (both from the back, of course), then the button revers, and so on.-- angel, Dec 13 2001 OK - take Aristotle's clothes robot, shrink wrap the clothes onto the robot (or expand the robot, it's up to you) then heat the robot. Voila, clothes ironed from the inside.-- lubbit, Dec 13 2001 It would be so much easier if we all wore sheets. Easier still if every day was dress-down-day, cos who irons T-shirts and jeans?-- angel, Dec 13 2001 [blissmiss]: That only works with young people. I won't entertain the thought of lots of naked old people who need ironing themselves...-- pmillerchip, Dec 13 2001 I'd like a remote-controlled vaccuum myself.-- arghblah, Dec 14 2001 random, halfbakery