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"Confession: I am no domestic diva. I love to cook and I have even more spices than shoes but my devotion to home economics stops there. In fact, my ironing board has been wedged away in a closet behind some old Christmas wrapping paper since I moved to my current apartment more than three years ago. But yesterday I got a little pressing lesson from the self-proclaimed &amp;quot;Queen of Steam,&amp;quot; and I just may be an ironing convert... A few weeks ago, my dry cleaners gave me an itemized bill for everything I&amp;#x27;d spent there in 2008. Let&amp;#x27;s just say that Alexander Wang leather jacket I&amp;#x27;ve been hemming and hawing over for the past couple of months could have been mine many, many times over for the small fortune I&amp;#x27;d forked over to have shirts laundered and skirts pressed. And then just a couple of days later, the lovely ladies from Rowenta rang me up and wanted to know if I was interested in an ironing lesson from &amp;quot;Queen of Steam&amp;quot; Barbara Zagnoni, a veritable expert in pressing matters (Har! Sorry, I couldn&amp;#x27;t resist). How could I say no? I showed up feeling a little skeptical but ready to be schooled in the ins and outs of ironing. I tried out both the Rowenta Pressure Iron and Steamer (it makes as much steam as a serious commercial steamer but is teeny enough to fit on the counter top) and the tinier, slightly more user-friendly Rowenta Advancer. Both were light and didn&amp;#x27;t require much pressure and easy to use, but it was Barbara&amp;#x27;s tips that made me really feel like a pro. Women&amp;#x27;s shirts are often much more expensive than men&amp;#x27;s to have professionally laundered, so doing them at home will save a lot of cash. Here&amp;#x27;s how to attack a standard cotton shirt: 1. Start with the back of the collar, working the tip of the iron into the tiny crevices to get rid of any small wrinkles. 2. Move on to the yoke of the shirt (ie, the broad flat expanse under the collar), pressing only a small area at a time. 3. Next do the cuffs, sleeves, and front of the body. 4. Do the back of the body of the shirt and the front of the collar last, because these are the places that wrinkle most easily and are most visible. If you start at the &amp;quot;outside&amp;quot; of the shirt and work your way in, you won&amp;#x27;t have to go back to touch up the shirt (hello, I&amp;#x27;ve been doing it exactly opposite of this for years! I also iron on a towel draped over my kitchen counter top so, um, I guess I&amp;#x27;m not the best example). Barbara also recommends using a bit of spritz or steam for especially tough wrinkles, and pulling your fabric very very taught for that extra polished look. I bought a really cute leather skirt for $25 at the City Opera Thirft Shop last week, and it had what I thought was a permanent, very deep wrinkle. It had been sitting on that rack (and before that, in someone&amp;#x27;s attic) for who knows how long, and I tried putting a stack of books on top of it and ironing it under a towel, but nothing worked. Barbara suggested I steam the hell out of it, blasting it with my steamer iron and then smoothing it with my hands. Guess what? It worked! I also took her advice to use a bit of spray starch on anything linen for that very perfectly pressed feeling and that worked, too. I have tapped into my inner domestic diva, and she is on fire... What are some of your secrets for ironing like a pro? Do you guys send everything out to the cleaners, like I did, or do you try and do as much of it at home as you can? Will you try out Barbara&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;work from the outside in&amp;quot; trick when ironing your shirts? Share! Want more money-saving style tips? Find out how to hem your pants at home (with no needle and thread required) and how to remove serious stains like a total pro! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/fashion/blogs/dressed/2009/02/pssteasy-ironing-secrets-that>