I’m often rewarded with serendipitous discoveries when browsing the internet. Case in point: Garmentcare.info. But we’ll get to why I love this site in a bit.

Busy Person's YogaFirst I need to tell you about my obsession with yoga. No, I don’t do yoga often, or ever, actually. I’ve done it once many months ago, for about twenty minutes, and I’ve been dying to do it again ever since. But as I’ve written before, I’m currently very pressed for time to exercise.

I’m slowly getting back to regular workouts again, but what’s definitely missing from my life is a meditative element. Until my schedule allows me to integrate yoga practice, I’ve decided to declare ironing as the new yoga. It’s not as crazy as it sounds, and here’s why.

Recently I had to get all dressed up for work to assist with a court trial. I was in a bit of a panic because I didn’t have an ironed shirt to wear. This past February I decided that my garment care expenses were getting out of hand. After all, I send my laundry out for wash n’ fold, and I always have a large load of dry cleaning. Together these services add up to about $70 a month total. I figured that the least I could do to save money was to iron my own shirts instead of sending them out for laundering/pressing, which costs about $1.75 a shirt.

Well, it would have been a good money-saving idea if I actually ironed the shirts once they were washed. Instead, I had a stack of clean wrinkly shirts and a bunch of frenzied co-workers waiting for my help at trial.

So, I went to my closet, grabbed the board and the iron, and I got started.

I was pretty rusty at first because I hadn’t ironed a shirt in a while, but I stayed focused. I started with the smaller pieces of the shirt, and smoothed the wrinkles away. I moved on to the sleeves, and made a nice firm crease. Without losing focus, I moved on to the larger pieces, and smoothed more wrinkles away, pressing hard into the stubborn wrinkles.

My mind was completely in a zone defined by a board, a clean white shirt and wrinkles disappearing before my eyes, thanks to the powerful, steaming iron in my hand. It was a beautiful metaphor in action, and it was helping take away from the stress of the trial. By the time I finished ironing the shirt, I was a little sad I was done because I wanted to visualize more worries and annoyances disappearing. However, I couldn’t really complain. The sense of calm I experienced was rather quite glorious, much like how I felt after my first attempt at yoga.

Of course I’m not going to iron instead of doing yoga, but if you’re like me, and you want to do yoga but don’t have the time or resources, you can be creative. I’m sure there are other ways to be meditative and breathing focused, but I found ironing to be a good one. If you have had similar experiences with money-saving chores that were soothing, please feel free to share them. And if you have tips on how to make yoga easily fit in a tight schedule, well that’s even better.

Now back to why I love Garmentcare.info. They have extremely helpful tips on just about everything you can think of when it comes to your clothes. Wondering about home dry cleaning kits? They have answers. Want to make your clothes last longer? They have answers. I could go on and on, but the point is that I was thrilled to find a vast array of money-saving tips for something as important to me as my wardrobe. They even have tips on how to iron like a pro. (I was quite pleased to learn that’s how mom taught me to iron. Too bad I don’t iron more often.)

So there it is: something like yoga for everyone, anywhere, anytime and wrinkle-free. Just please don’t get carried away and get involved with Extreme Ironing.