So, I Bought a New Ironing Board...

Like most of the things I post on this blog, this shouldn't be big news. In the life of a normal person, it probably wouldn't even bear mentioning. But here's the thing: I haven't had an ironing board I could use since June. (Don't worry too much--remember that I work from home and that I certainly haven't had any time for socializing in the past several months. You don't really have to iron your clothes to drive your kid to school.)

Back in June, you may recall, the universe sent me some raw sewage for my birthday. My ironing board was in the closet where the sewage came up, and obviously needed to be disinfected before I used it again. But I've been busy and I haven't needed to iron and frankly, I really didn't want to handle it all that much (because even though it LOOKS perfectly clean, I know there are secret, invisible sewage germs crawling all over it), so it stood there for...well...okay...five months.

Somewhere along the way, it occurred to me that ironing boards come cheap and I could just toss this one and get a new one without sewage on it. This seemed like a good idea because, in addition to having had no time for things like scrubbing ironing boards, I'm a TINY bit OCD, and I knew that no matter how thoroughly I cleaned the ironing board, I'd always FEEL like it had secret, invisible sewage germs crawling on it--germs which would somehow manage to transfer to my clothing and even multiply there with no diminishment of the germs remaining on the board.

Yep, definitely seemed like it was worth twenty bucks to avoid all that.

So yesterday, I bought a new ironing board. The timing wasn't an accident--I have to dress nicely today, so it was either clean the old one or buy a new one. I cheerfully bought a new ironing board (which turned out to be only $12--what a bargain!) and brought it home. It's a "T-Leg Ironing Board", presumably so named because its legs form an "X".

And then I gleefully carted that old ironing board out the back door to the garbage...and hesitated. Because, you see, it's a perfectly good ironing board, and someone might come along and pick it up and take it home. And it looks all gleaming white and spotless--you'd never suspect that it was teeming with secret, invisible sewage germs...it suddenly occurred to me that they might transfer to someone else's clothing.

I tried to reason with myself. I mean, if someone is the type to pull an ironing board out of someone else's garbage and use it without sanitizing it, chances are my sewage germs are the least of his worries, right? And anyway, anyone who would pick up something like that WOULD clean it, right? Even if it looked clean? RIGHT?

But the thing is, we have people around here who pick up items and take them to the second-hand store. Granted, my ironing board probably isn't worth much (after all, you can get a brand new one for $12), but it's perfectly good (except for the sewage germs) and it could happen. And if someone picked up an ironing board at a resale shop, then she might NOT think she had to sanitize it. She might think the store had done that. But maybe they wouldn't have. The image of secret, invisible sewage germs transferring to some stranger's clothing--some stranger's CHILD's clothing--was just too much for me. After buying a new ironing board so that I could throw this one away instead of sanitizing it, I...

brought it back in and sanitized it so that I could throw it away.