What Homeschool Mums Get Up To

Mouths full of food, cups of tea at our side, children playing bubbles outside or finishing up their radio plays for the day's topic, our last co-op of the year was typical of our two-weekly meetings.

Various discussions followed about our plans next year, about who might join our group, about the topics we could cover.

And then this bizarre but funny conversation started. It went something like this:

Mum 1: I've got so much time now that I've been cross with my husband and stopped ironing his shirts.

Mum 2: I don't own anything that I iron.

Mum 3: I think we should all save the planet and just stop ironing altogether.  In fact, I want to design t-shirts that say: "Go Green: Stop Ironing!"

Mum 2: Why do we iron anyway?

Mum 3: I think it all started with posh people -- they could afford to have servants who ironed for them, and then everyone else wanted flat clothes, too -- to look posh.

Mum 1: I think there are some parts of the world where you really have to iron, almost like a law.  In Africa, there's a bug that lays eggs in your clothes while they're drying outside, so you have to iron to kill the eggs.

Mum 3: Ewwwww.

Mum 2: Maybe it was some queen who started having things ironed, like being the first one to have a baby lying down. 

Mum 1: I think maybe the Chinese started it.

Mum 3: Oh, great!  [My child]  is doing a project on China.  She can look up about ironing.

Mum 2: But isn't this our last co-op?  I mean, we've finished for the summer now.

Mum 1: We don't stop for the summer, because we have breaks throughout the year as it is.

Mum 3: Yeah, us, too.  We're getting in a good groove right now, and I don't want them to forget things.  I think a little research about ironing would be interesting.

Mum 2: I think we should have more tea.


(Out of interest, see this link about the history of ironing -- it was the posh people who started it!)