how many shirts?

Hmm. I've just finished a mountain of ironing. When I say mountain, I do mean a mountain, with at least 13 shirts. I found myself wondering if I should take a leaf out of Ed's book [well, PDA, obv] and send my ironing off somewhere professional. Not that I would for the hate of ironing, you understand, I actually find ironing quite therapeutic and even relaxing. Most people think (or confirm their suspicions of) me as odd for this, but it doesn't actually mean I do a lot of ironing. No sir, those 13 shirts have been building up for quite a while :) I wondered about the greenness of professional ironing, compared to nappy washing and washing up. Not professional washing up, of course, but my defence of not washing up very often is that I use the same bowl of hot washing up water for several lots of meals when the side is full, whereas if I washed up every time I cook [and let's face it, it's not that often!] I'd use way more water and energy unnecessarily. That also was my reasoning behind the dishwasher when the kitchen was refitted...And I stick by it. As for nappies, after discussions last week about real nappies, I was wondering what the energy differences were now. Obviously if you use real nappies you don't throw away disposables which take years to decay, but then how much hot water and detergent do you use washing reusable nappies? This I reckon must be better to be done by professional nappy cleaners (which do exist in many places now), because presumably the same basic logic as my washing up theory would stand - many many nappies in one very large washer with one lot of hot water and detergent is possibly better than people washing at home? But then you have to factor in the travel to collect/return them, so would that wipe out any gain? What if they weren't collected from homes, but from a 'central' point - a post office or shop or somewhere you went to regularly anyway. (This clearly has a small problem in I'm charitably saying this because I trust my postmaster absolutely, but I'm still rather mad that I availed myself of the drycleaning service collected from the post office before I went away at Christmas and my Karen Millen black dress went AWOL over the hols - by the Dry Cleaners, so in future I'm taking them to a shop where I can sit and read and wait for them).

I'm sure that economists should be always releasing new data on what's actually better for the carbon footprint - how may babies on a street before it's better to have someone collect all nappies and take to a launderette? Is there a website somewhere where you can see some of the alternatives laid out to look at? Ironing doesn't really cost any more if I do it in a large pile or a small pile - I guess the warming up of the iron each time is fairly minimum. On the other hand, my energy bills are about to go up 34% for gas and 12% electricity as of Monday, so maybe I'll rethink again soon. I think I shall be rethinking the cleaner idea again this term. To be truthful, I was ironing to avoid hoovering, which I like even less than ironing. When I went to Phoenix, to my first Bb conference, one of the keynote speakers (an ex-minister of state for education?) gave a superb discussion of the millenial generation, not on the usual themes that we hear a lot of now, but in terms of the work sectors that they will graduate into - that they would be hightech or service. That trip was quite an eye-opener for me in terms of the service industry often being exactly that, hotel staff who said have a nice day and meant it, who genuinely seemed to find it a pleasure to make your stay perfect. That never happens in Europe! As the years pass, I do think we are moving towards these as main industries, high-tech and service/leisure. Increasingly, I find people thinking it ok to consider using professional services, because the sector is there, and a part of life - and why not? I haven't quite got to the handing over 13 shirts to a professional ironer yet though...