Starch
I have been experimenting with different ways to starch things, after I needed to iron our curtains and wanted to use starch. I starched them in the washing machine because I didn't want to waste that much of my aerosol starch spray. I bought the box of laundry starch that is in the starching section of the grocery store and followed the directions for starching in the washer. It's pretty cool. You bring a pot of water to a boil on the stove, and add a starch-cold water mixture. It gets all thick and translucent, just like you'd espect. Then you set the washing machine to the final rinse/softener rinse and add the starch to the water. The machine will agitate it for a few minutes (it needs to be at least three, the box says) and spin the water out, leaving starched curtains inside. You just damp-dry and iron. After this experiment, I tried the new machine-starching method on a load of Scott's shirts. It was awesome. I just dried them like normal, and when I got around to ironing a day or two later, I ironed them on the steam setting and they came out just like I had paused every 4 seconds to spray starch on, so the ironing went twice as fast. Woo hoo! Scott has a very dark blue solid colored shirt that it was a little splotchy on, but every other shirt- even fairly dark ones- turned out just like I hoped they would. The other starch experiment I tried, for when I don't have a whole load of shirts I can starch together, is a homemade starch. It's just 2 tsp. of cornstarch mixed in a cup of cold water and put in the spray bottle. The advantages to this starch is that it's practically free and I don't have to worry about breathing in chemicals the whole time I'm ironing. It's also unscented, which is nice. Scott reported that it feels just the same as the other starch, so that's great. I think there may be a way to make a cooked starch sollution and spray it on in this way, but I have yet to try that out. Cooked starch supposedly irons more easily and I wouldnt have to keep shaking the bottle to keep it all in sollution. Anyway, if you find yourself with a whole load of shirts to do, I would definately recommend trying the starch-in-washer method. The end.
