Among all the equipment and tools I use for my daily hustle, the one I absolutely cannot do without is the electric iron. It gives the perfect finishing touch before packaging and delivering.
Although I can choose not to iron the clothes I wash, that won’t produce a good outcome, except in cases where the fabric doesn’t require ironing, and such jobs rarely come.
Two years ago, before I switched to the particular electric iron I am currently using, the previous one gave me serious issues. I would take it for repair, and the electrician would fix it perfectly, but after using it for just two to three days, it would start malfunctioning again. My other appliances even began to get damaged, and unfortunately for me, that was the only electric iron I had at the time. I kept managing it like that. I even ended up buying a fairly used electric iron from the electrician—one of those that customers had abandoned, which he repaired and resold. That one also gave me problems, and it was a very frustrating experience.
It affected my work seriously. I started giving excuses to customers just to buy myself time to fix the situation. Although they were not outright lies, I simply didn’t disclose how critical the situation was. At some point, I even wished I could just wash clothes without ironing them before handing them over to customers.
Eventually, I got another one. It was working fine, but I needed something with higher heat because it wasn’t giving me the level of hotness I desired. I had to exchange it with my boss’s wife, who owns a tailoring shop. It was just a simple arrangement—“let me use this one for now while you use mine.” She agreed because she needed an iron that wouldn’t easily burn clothes, especially since she had apprentices who were not yet skilled in using an iron. That was how the exchange happened, and I have been using it ever since. It has turned out to be the best iron I’ve used since I started this work.
For me, once the electric iron is efficient and produces the right amount of heat, my work becomes easy. It gives me the same feeling one gets when using a well-sharpened cutlass to clear a forest. This electric iron is just like that, a perfectly sharpened cutlass.
I don’t joke with electric irons because I understand how terrible and risky a faulty one can be. I have used an electric iron that burns clothes easily, not even because the user couldn’t control the regulator, but simply because it malfunctioned and burned clothes unpredictably.
Thanks for reading.
Photo source: Own photo
This is my entry to Week 98, Edition 03 of the Weekly Featured contest in Hive Learners Community
