The Extinction of the Ironing Board
Ordinary Tuesdays
Observations from everyday life. The small moments, familiar places, chance conversations, and ordinary experiences that quietly reveal something larger.
The other day I found myself looking for an ironing board cover.
It wasn’t exactly a life-altering mission. Mine had finally given up after years of faithful service, and replacing it seemed like a perfectly ordinary thing to do.
So I wandered into Canadian Tire and asked one of the young employees where I might find ironing board covers.
She looked at me with a vague expression.
Not the kind that says, “I’m not sure which aisle.”
The kind that says, “I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about.”
For a split second, I wondered if she’d misheard me and thought I’d asked her for a phonograph needle. Or a rotary phone. Maybe some typewriter tape.
That interaction followed me home.
Not because I desperately needed an ironing board cover.
Because it made me wonder…
Have I gotten so old that something has gone extinct in my lifetime?
I distinctly remember television commercials for spray starch.
Steam irons were respectable wedding gifts. Mine still works perfectly.
For years (decades actually), Sunday afternoons often meant ironing my uniform shirts and getting ready for Monday morning.
I imagine similar scenes in the homes of my uniform-wearing colleagues. Nobody thought twice about it.
It was just something adults did. Don’t we? Didn’t we?
Today?
We certainly haven’t eliminated wrinkled clothes.
So what changed?
Did ironing quietly disappear while I wasn’t paying attention?
Or did we simply decide there were better ways to spend an hour on a Sunday afternoon?
Maybe fabrics changed.
Maybe business casual happened.
Maybe working from home made ironing less relevant.
Or maybe we’ve reached the point where we’re perfectly comfortable leaving the house in wrinkled clothes…along with pyjama pants and Crocs.
…
OMG.
Judgey wudgey.
I am my grandmother.
The funny thing is, retirement itself didn’t put this on my radar.
After all, I knew I wouldn’t need crisply pressed white shirts anymore.
Retirement simply gave me enough time to notice it.
That’s becoming a recurring theme in my life.
I’ve started noticing ordinary things that seem to have quietly slipped away. Or that have come back to bite me in the arse. Bit of a mixed bag really. Things that I scoffed at my parents and grandparents for, like shopping only on days when there’s a senior’s discount.
Nobody announces these things.
There isn’t a farewell ceremony.
One day they’re just…gone. Or you realize your Gran was onto something!
Some things, though, I refuse to let disappear.
My great-grandfather was the local milkman.
Literally.
The horse pulled the wagon.
Milk never came to my own front door, but that story is still part of my family’s fairly recent history.
I still write handwritten letters.
Not because I don’t know how to send an email.
It’s how I rage against the machine.
I still love typewriters.
Not because they’re efficient.
Because I like them.
Sometimes that’s reason enough.
Maybe that’s why the ironing board has been rattling around in my head.
It’s not really about ironing.
It’s about realizing that I’ve lived long enough to watch ordinary parts of everyday life quietly fade away.
Not dramatic things.
Ordinary things.
The kinds of things nobody notices until someone asks a twenty- or thirty-something where the ironing board covers are.
And then I started wondering…
How many other ordinary things have quietly gone the way of the dodo bird? (How many people even use that expression anymore?)
Maybe getting older isn’t just about watching yourself change.
Maybe it’s about waking up one day and realizing the ordinary world has been changing around you all along.
One conversation in a hardware store.
One missing product.
And yikes, one puzzled look from someone thirty years younger.
And suddenly you find yourself wondering when ironing boards became museum pieces.
I suspect this won’t be the last ordinary thing that catches me by surprise.
In fact…
I have a feeling I’m just beginning to notice.
Cynthia Ross Tustin is the founder of I'm Thinking of Retiring, an online publication exploring the psychology, purpose, and everyday realities of life after work. A retired Fire Chief, former ICU and Emergency Room nurse, instructor, and policy writer, she combines lived experience, research, and a lifelong curiosity about human behaviour to write thoughtful essays on retirement, identity, purpose, friendship, and the ordinary moments that quietly reveal something larger. Through her Retirement Field Notes and Ordinary Tuesday series, she encourages readers to approach this next chapter with curiosity rather than certainty.
