Six Minutes

On Sunday nights, I do the ironing. This week, as with most weeks, my mind began to figuratively wander. As I folded my favourite blue shirt (crossing the sleeves over the chest to mimic the pose of a sleeping vampire), I started to wonder how long I had spent, cumulatively, ironing over the course of the last year. Now, every week I get through five shirts, and it takes me six minutes a shirt*. So over the course of every 52 weeks, I spend over 24 hours ironing.

I know it’s mundane, but I thought this was a statistic worth noting. So I got out my notebook, turned to the first blank page, and wrote it down. It was then that I flicked backwards through the book, and spied the entry from last Sunday: “Note: spend more than 24 hours a year on ironing”.

Now, assuming that it takes me thirty seconds to locate the notebook and a pen, and another thirty to write this down, I really think I should get out more.




* Yes, I do time it. No, I didn’t start mentally compiling a league table of my friends according to how long I thought they would take to iron a shirt. Yes, the previous statement was a lie.