Playing With Steam or How I Fell in Love with Shirts

My husband is Italian. He grew up in a household where a suit with a shirt and tie was the normal way to dress for a man ...everyday. Fast forward many years.....now married to me, and living in Canada, he has lost the suit and the tie, but still prefers to wear a shirt everyday. Ok. A fib. Sometimes, he will actually wear a Lacoste top. The point is, he has a rather large collection of shirts: cotton, linen, synthetic, dress, and casual. But none of them are short sleeve. It would seem that Italian men don't wear short sleeves. And what's more, he never, ever, owned a pair of jeans until he met me! Thank the Lord for me. Wait, there's more. He refuses to be got dead in shorts of any length, which is a real shame, because, like most men, he has great legs. And he won't wear sandals . Thankfully, our summers are short, here in Canada. But I digress.

Back to his shirts. During the Winter, Fall and Spring months, my husband would wear one shirt per day. Normal, right? Come Summer, he might wear 3 shirts daily. I know I don't have to explain why. And here's the point. Year after year I have watched him take his shirts to the dry cleaners every single week. And then a few days later, I have watched him go and retrieve them, all on disgusting wire hangers. Much more to the point, this was a costly expense.

Unlike my mother, I have always hated ironing: from yanking out the ironing board and setting it up, to filling up the iron, and watching it hiss and spit all over the top on the cover, to the actual ironing of too many items, to waiting for the iron to cool down and putting everything away.
And when you hate a particular chore a vicious cycle begins to happen: what you hate to do the most, just ends up piling up and up and up, in this case, the newly washed and dried clothing that is waiting in a plastic laundry basket. So when you finally do get around to doing it, you're angry, exhausted and fed up.

My wonderful husband, has a love/hate relationship with my housecleaning. He hates to see me cleaning because a). he knows how much there is to do and it's hard work; b). it's time- consuming, which means I'm not at the computer doing a different kind of work; c). he feels guilty because he doesn't help, but makes all the right noises instead. "Tell me what I can do, my love, to help you". With those words, he actually believes he has exonerated himself. It's a running joke every time I clean, and we always have a chuckle over this little ritual of his.

What I don't chuckle over, however, is the fact that secretly, I know he loves seeing me clean the house. I know it because each and every time, he comes up to me with kisses, and hugs and sweet love. Without fail. And I don't chuckle because it's such a sexist thing for me. He loves to see me cleaning because that's the home he grew up in, watching his mother scour the house.

Once again, I"m getting off the point,which is, my wonderful husband has never, ever asked me to iron his shirts. However grateful I have always been for that small mercy, I am totally aware of the extra and possibly unnecessary expense this has caused.

Now picture this. One day, out of the blue, I'm flipping channels and stop on an infomercial. The funny thing is, I never watch them. For one thing, they are so monotonous, and for another thing, I just don't trust the product to do what they say it can do, nor the testimonials. I really believe they are all paid actors. But here I am, on this particular day, a few months ago, and I"m watching this infomercial about my newest best housekeeping friend The Tobi.

Well, I watched and I watched and I watched, and I wanted to believe so much that this was real, and good and worthwhile. The more I saw, the more I believed. The Tobi is a small, lightweight steam machine with a flexible hose and steam head attached. You simply fill up the tank (could be a bit bigger) with tap water, plug it in and flip the switch, and within seconds, you are steaming everything and anything you can get your hands on. The best part was, the bulk of the infomercial was centered on steaming mens' shirts!!!

It wasn't cheap. Two hundred dollars, but I knew the dry cleaning bills just for my husband's shirts alone totaled up to way more than $200 annually. I also knew that if I bought it, there was always the chance that it wouldn't perform the way it did on TV, and also that my husband, (who knows I"m not frivolous), would think it was a gimmick until I could show him something that was 'proof positive', like one of his shirts looking like it just came back from the dry cleaners!

The infomercial almost made it look like fun. Not just fun, but fast fun. Bing, bang, boom! One shirt after the other was steamed to perfection. Which for me, of course, would be a small miracle. And it would have to be just that. For now, in my mind's eye, I could envision loads of shirts that would need washing, drying and then this 'bing, bang, boom' miraculous steam job.

Was I deterred? Not a bit. I picked up the phone, and ordered. I was told that as a special bonus, I was also going to receive a portable Tobi, which I could take with me when I travel. Not a bad idea, if I could only travel! And then the sales person told me it would probably take 4-6 weeks for it to arrive. That was a real downer, because, obviously, at this point, I was hot to steam!

Three days later, it arrived! Yes, you just read right. It arrived 3 days later. I couldn't believe it. It was like Christmas and my birthday all at the same time. And this is what I did, in order:
I dragged it into the kitchen, pried open the box, pulled out the various parts, read the instructions and assembled it in no time flat. Next, I filled up the tank with water, plugged it in, and flipped the switch, and voila! Within seconds, all kinds of steam was pouring out the nozzle head. I was so excited I couldn't stand it. Quickly, quickly, I found something in the laundry to iron. You hang it on a hanger, and place the handle of the hanger on this little notch they provide and start to steam.

O my God! It worked. It really worked. No scam, no hype. It was doing what it said it would do.
And it was EASY and it was FUN. It comes on this telescopic pole which you raise or lower so that you can sit or stand. I was sitting and steaming!!!

My husband couldn't believe it when he saw his shirts. Neither could I actually. They were wrinkle and odor free. And they looked as if they had come from the cleaners. I wouldn't lie about this. But it wasn't until 2-3 weeks later that it really hit him how much he was saving and loving it!

I've had The Tobi now for about 8 months, and every time I take him out, I swear it's like having a cheap date on the town with my newest friend: fast and fun times, all on a great budget!