10 ms·

Mildly related: I'm curious what are the latest advances in consumer irons and ironing boards. Something that improved them in the last 10-15 years, even increm

Mildly related: I'm curious what are the latest advances in consumer irons and ironing boards. Something that improved them in the last 10-15 years, even incrementally. For example SSDs became much more common and affordable over the past 15 years and their parameters also improved. Are there similar improvements in household appliances like irons? Where would one look for an industry overview?

derefr 5y ago
I don’t think consumer cleaning technology products like this keep up with the rate of change of underlying technologies. People get used to doing certain things (e.g. ironing) and want to keep doing it the same way their parents taught them. I’d instead look more at commercial cleaners (e.g. how shirts are cleaned/pressed for shipment to stores) if you want to see the bleeding edge of cleaning technology. (It’s sort of like home consoles vs. arcade machines in the 80s/90s. Home consoles had to optimize for affordability, while arcade machines could essentially be expensive operationalized prototypes as long as they paid for themselves.)
- rovr138 5y ago
  > People get used to doing certain things (e.g. ironing) and want to keep doing it the same way their parents taught them. tongue in cheek, but WHYY On the other hand, my mom has sent me things like machines that fold and do other stuff whenever she finds something… or refinds something. So I doubt she likes doing it and maybe passed that down to me.
  - derefr 5y ago
    • For a lot of people, having to learn something new as an adult, no matter how small, causes them some kind of psychic pain. • People (all animals?) seem to have a quirk about learning hygiene practices in particular, where the criteria they have for what is hygenic/unhygenic gets formed when they're children, and then becomes unalterable. People generally seem to intuitively believe that whatever hygiene practices they were taught as children, are exactly the set of things they need to do feel clean. No more, no less. And so they don't go out actively looking for new hygiene practices (or for hygiene technologies that would suggest new hygiene practices.)
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      Note: kids also often chafe at learning new things, if it feels like someone is telling them what to do. Source: My kids are 2.5 and 5, and I hang out with a lot of other small kids and their parents these days.
      - derefr 5y ago
        Depends on the thing. Children tend to be fine at self-directed learning, e.g. figuring out how to play a new video game. Some—most?—adults chafe at even the idea of engaging in an activity that requires self-directed learning. (To the point that we even have an English word for those adults that don't: "neophiles.")
        jacobolus 5y ago
        Some children enjoy playing some new video games. (As do some adults.) Some children (and some adults) would refuse to play a video game that someone else told them to play. Their decisions and feelings are contingent on the context (including social context). If you slow down and have a conversation you can sometimes figure out what the specific emotional problem is, often involving shame or fear, and what triggers it has. The problem is seldom if ever “so-and-so is incapable of learning anything new”.
        derefr 5y ago
        > Some children (and some adults) would refuse to play a video game that someone else told them to play. Well, yes, but coercion, extrinsic motivation, and general spite are all edge-cases, and outside the scope of what the core fact about "learning" that I'm trying to talk about here. Let's look at a specific non-edge-case case: learning under self-directed intrinsically-motivated reward + time pressure — for example, learning to hunt/gather when stranded in the wilderness and hungry. In situations like this, children do better than adults at deciding to begin experimenting in an attempt to learn how to survive. Adults will try to apply any skills they already have (however rusty), but will have a much harder time than children do in deciding to try to do things they haven't already ever been taught to do. And even when they do make that decision, they will repeatedly revoke it—i.e. give up much more quickly when a solution does not come easily to them. Even though, in education-theoretic terms, all the stars should be aligned in terms of motivating their learning process. > The problem is seldom if ever “so-and-so is incapable of learning anything new”. Of course not. That's the observed abstract pattern, not the reason. The reason for adults, AFAICT, is almost always pride/hubris — that is, the idea that they don't need to learn anything new, that there's no advantage in it to outweigh the learning cost, because they've got by just fine up to now without having learned it. (And also because learning is just plain harder for adults, since they have so many existing schemas that need to be broken+reshaped in the process of fully absorbing new ideas that don't fit the existing schema.) This resistance comes almost always from adults who see themselves as having higher social status than whoever's trying to teach them the thing. They have no mental schema for learning from someone younger or more junior (or of a lower social class/caste) than themselves, since it's not something they've ever experienced earlier in their lives. Instead, when someone in an inferior social positions knows a thing, and offers to teach it to this social-superior adult, the adult will instead try to manipulate their social inferior into doing the task for them any time they need it to be done — often under the pretext of demonstration for purpose of learning. But with no intention of actually learning, and a complete rejection on being tested for knowledge acquisition (because that would be a violation of the social dynamic!) Note also that learning is separate from doing. I know many adults that are willing to do novel things (without really understanding what they're doing), and to memorize that specific series of actions by rote — but who have no desire to understand the more general skill behind the rote actions they're taking, such that they could perform related actions in any context other than the exactly memorized thing. In general, memorizing is easy, while learning a new skill is much, much harder. (And yet memorization without learning almost never "sticks", since there's no backing mental schema to encode the memorized steps in terms of.)
bewaretheirs 5y ago
There's a market niche for "steam generator" irons specifically for use when sewing (where you need the iron sporadically while assembling a garment from pieces). This is sort of a "pro-sumer" space. These typically have an offboard water tank and boiler that doubles as a stand for the hot iron. This also lets the iron itself be lighter in weight. A key feature for this market is the absence of the automatic shutoff that's commonly found in consumer irons.
- thetis 5y ago
  same answer from my perspective, i did not iron a lot during the last year because of lockdows but i see nice machines using steam. The sound is the same as a nespresso machine so i believe that it is based on the same steam generation technology, opposed to the brass tank steam generation process used in quality espresso machines & professional irons.
hughrr 5y ago
I have discovered the joy of having no clothes you need to iron. That’s real progress!
- codazoda 5y ago
  I buy a lot of black 100% polyester t-shirts for this reason. They don't need to be ironed and I don't have to decide what I'm wearing for the day.
  - freeplay 5y ago
    Nothing more comfortable than a nice plastic shirt
    - 867-5309 5y ago
      the dolphins disagree
      - WJW 5y ago
        Dolphins don't wear shirts so they're hardly experts on the subject.
        867-5309 5y ago
        *shouldn't
    - DiffEq 5y ago
      These can be real problems when subject to a heat flash from a nuclear blast. They tend to melt right on you rather than block the heat.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - ackbar03 5y ago
dheera 5y ago
Also, how do people get power for their irons? Do they backpack an inverter and huge lithium battery? Or are there chemically powered irons that they use?
- rovr138 5y ago
  Throw some coal in them and away they go. They weren’t always electric.
- cpcallen 5y ago
  They don't generally power their irons. It's more about the absurd photos than the pressed shirts.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    Extreme posing.
elorant 5y ago
Steam generating irons. I bought one a few years back and makes ironing so much easier, especially for shirts and trousers.
47 5y ago
https://helloeffie.com/ https://helloeffie.com/ Never used it myself but i have been curious if it actually works.
- pronik 5y ago
  More like "is it released after all those years". I've been very interested in the concept, but that's the last I've heard from them in the last 3-4 years.
  - dtgriscom 5y ago
    Their blog was last updated almost two years ago.
- nose 5y ago
  A hot shower can achieve similar results: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowerScience/comments/302aqp/shower_steam_for_shirt_wrinkles/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_num_comments https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowerScience/comments/302aqp/showe...
cpcallen 5y ago
You can now get 'cordless' (electric) irons. Like an electric kettle, they heat up while sitting in the (decidedly non-cordless) base, but you don't have to contend with the cord while actually doing the pressing. I am a bit doubtful about whether they are much of an improvement over the usual corded kind, but the one person I know who has one insists that she greatly prefers it.
- zwayhowder 5y ago
  I used on in Japan years ago and had to wait about 5 years before they showed up in Australia at a reasonable price. Not worth replacing a perfectly good iron with, but if you accidently melt the cord to your current iron it's worth considering. It is definitely easier not having to worry about the cord tangling or pulling at your clothes.
- bluGill 5y ago
  My grandma used them for years. Hers weren't electric though, she had to put them on the wood stove to heat. The wood stove was next to her sewing machine, while the electric iron was in a different room, so it was a lot faster for her to pick up the iron than use the electric one. They didn't have automatic steam, but otherwise worked just as well.
dragontamer 5y ago
> Are there similar improvements in household appliances like irons? I bought a new washer/dryer recently. A bunch of bells and whistles, but... the "autosense the water level" feature is awesome, and likely saves water in the long run. It seems like washers use so much less water these days, its not like the old agitator models from 2000s which filled up a tank. Instead, modern washers thoroughly wet the clothes, add a bit of extra water at the bottom, and then mix vigorously (be it a front-load or top load, the HE washers all do this technique). This leads to lower water usage. I also ended up using much less soap per load (the first few times, I noticed the soap wasn't fully getting rinsed out, but the significantly less water usage means I also should use significantly less soap). > Where would one look for an industry overview? At least for generic household appliances, Consumer Reports is a non-profit survey / reviewer group. I dunno if they have much on irons themselves, but I haven't seen anything wrong with their reviews yet. I think there's a problem when the price goes too low. For something like $20, $50, or even $200 or $1000 appliances even... its not really worthwhile to review. Instead, you often have to just buy the thing and hope for the best. Maybe there's a specific professional group who is thinking about these tools and how to use them (chefs and cooking tools, or woodworkers + woodworking tools). But for things like irons or washers, or other household appliances... I don't think any such group exists outside of things like Consumer Reports. Still, I get my reviews on "Tide vs Persil", and other household items. I think "Wirecutter" is a competitor and some people say they've got good reviews too. In any case, Consumer Report's page on steam irons is here: https://www.consumerreports.org/products/steam-irons-28981/steam-iron-28728/recommended/ https://www.consumerreports.org/products/steam-irons-28981/s...
- Qworg 5y ago
  As an extension to the soap, there are single squeeze detergent bottles now that precisely meter on a one handed squeeze. So simple, yet phenomenally useful.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    I've seen those, but... how does the bottle know how big your washer is? Or how water efficient it is? A agitator "tub washer" uses 40-gallons of water to wash clothes. A modern front-loading HE washer uses 10-gallons. If you use the same amount of soap on both washers, you'll naturally be either... adding too much soap to the HE washer, or too little soap to the agitator washer. ------- Same thing with "Tide Pods". The idea of those things is "one pod per load", which removes the mental need to think of how much soap to add per load. But... once again, there's many different washers that all use different amounts of water. There's no way we really have a one-side fits all situation.
sydd 5y ago
> Are there similar improvements in household appliances like irons? Some examples that I know of: - modern robot vacuums, that can mop, use LIDAR etc. We have a pretty decent one, it works OK, but we still have to vacuum by ourselves every 2 weeks or so. - battery operated vacuums, irons, hair dryers etc. - smart homes -- automaticcally setting heat, window blinds - tons of gimmicky stuff like smart fridges, or water taps with touch screens. But I'd consider these just some quality of life improvements, not major time savers like washing things by hand vs a washing machine. IMO the next big thing will be household 3D printers when someone finds out how to make them safe and reliable for everyday use by non-technical people.
inasio 5y ago
My favourite advance from the last ten years has been around precision cooking. Sous vide is perhaps the most well known, but you can now get sensors to automatically control a bbq, steam and temperature controlled ovens are becoming more common/affordable (still waiting for a home-use Rational), etc. I love being able to cook with consistent quality and easily repeatable results.
- dunham 5y ago
  Yeah, Anova has something that claims to be a temperature controlled (+-0.5F) steam oven at the $600 price point. It's tempting, but I'm not sure I want to give up the counter space. If anyone here has one, I'm curious how well it works.
modzu 5y ago
the main advancement is planned obsolescence. well that, and the electric toothbrush
xarope 5y ago
back in the days when I used to have to wear a suit and tie, my wife bought me a laurastar. The hook was that they had a fan built into the board, that could suck (it could also blow and hence billow the material instead) the shirt to the board, so that ironing was easier.
__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
I'm pretty sure that if we managed to get extreme ironing into the olympics, we'd see increased innovation in this sector.
maguay 5y ago
A quick Amazon search doesn't seem to show them being popular in the States, but in Asia at least irons with separate water tanks where the iron itself doesn't get hot enough to burn clothes have become the new standard over the past few years.
u801e 5y ago
I don't know about the last 10 to 15 years, but 30 years ago, a lot of clothing brands had wrinkle free/resistant products which significantly reduced the need for ironing.

derefr 5y ago

I don’t think consumer cleaning technology products like this keep up with the rate of change of underlying technologies. People get used to doing certain things (e.g. ironing) and want to keep doing it the same way their parents taught them. I’d instead look more at commercial cleaners (e.g. how shirts are cleaned/pressed for shipment to stores) if you want to see the bleeding edge of cleaning technology. (It’s sort of like home consoles vs. arcade machines in the 80s/90s. Home consoles had to optimize for affordability, while arcade machines could essentially be expensive operationalized prototypes as long as they paid for themselves.)

rovr138 5y ago
> People get used to doing certain things (e.g. ironing) and want to keep doing it the same way their parents taught them. tongue in cheek, but WHYY On the other hand, my mom has sent me things like machines that fold and do other stuff whenever she finds something… or refinds something. So I doubt she likes doing it and maybe passed that down to me.
- derefr 5y ago
  • For a lot of people, having to learn something new as an adult, no matter how small, causes them some kind of psychic pain. • People (all animals?) seem to have a quirk about learning hygiene practices in particular, where the criteria they have for what is hygenic/unhygenic gets formed when they're children, and then becomes unalterable. People generally seem to intuitively believe that whatever hygiene practices they were taught as children, are exactly the set of things they need to do feel clean. No more, no less. And so they don't go out actively looking for new hygiene practices (or for hygiene technologies that would suggest new hygiene practices.)
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Note: kids also often chafe at learning new things, if it feels like someone is telling them what to do. Source: My kids are 2.5 and 5, and I hang out with a lot of other small kids and their parents these days.
    - derefr 5y ago
      Depends on the thing. Children tend to be fine at self-directed learning, e.g. figuring out how to play a new video game. Some—most?—adults chafe at even the idea of engaging in an activity that requires self-directed learning. (To the point that we even have an English word for those adults that don't: "neophiles.")
      - jacobolus 5y ago
        Some children enjoy playing some new video games. (As do some adults.) Some children (and some adults) would refuse to play a video game that someone else told them to play. Their decisions and feelings are contingent on the context (including social context). If you slow down and have a conversation you can sometimes figure out what the specific emotional problem is, often involving shame or fear, and what triggers it has. The problem is seldom if ever “so-and-so is incapable of learning anything new”.
        derefr 5y ago
        > Some children (and some adults) would refuse to play a video game that someone else told them to play. Well, yes, but coercion, extrinsic motivation, and general spite are all edge-cases, and outside the scope of what the core fact about "learning" that I'm trying to talk about here. Let's look at a specific non-edge-case case: learning under self-directed intrinsically-motivated reward + time pressure — for example, learning to hunt/gather when stranded in the wilderness and hungry. In situations like this, children do better than adults at deciding to begin experimenting in an attempt to learn how to survive. Adults will try to apply any skills they already have (however rusty), but will have a much harder time than children do in deciding to try to do things they haven't already ever been taught to do. And even when they do make that decision, they will repeatedly revoke it—i.e. give up much more quickly when a solution does not come easily to them. Even though, in education-theoretic terms, all the stars should be aligned in terms of motivating their learning process. > The problem is seldom if ever “so-and-so is incapable of learning anything new”. Of course not. That's the observed abstract pattern, not the reason. The reason for adults, AFAICT, is almost always pride/hubris — that is, the idea that they don't need to learn anything new, that there's no advantage in it to outweigh the learning cost, because they've got by just fine up to now without having learned it. (And also because learning is just plain harder for adults, since they have so many existing schemas that need to be broken+reshaped in the process of fully absorbing new ideas that don't fit the existing schema.) This resistance comes almost always from adults who see themselves as having higher social status than whoever's trying to teach them the thing. They have no mental schema for learning from someone younger or more junior (or of a lower social class/caste) than themselves, since it's not something they've ever experienced earlier in their lives. Instead, when someone in an inferior social positions knows a thing, and offers to teach it to this social-superior adult, the adult will instead try to manipulate their social inferior into doing the task for them any time they need it to be done — often under the pretext of demonstration for purpose of learning. But with no intention of actually learning, and a complete rejection on being tested for knowledge acquisition (because that would be a violation of the social dynamic!) Note also that learning is separate from doing. I know many adults that are willing to do novel things (without really understanding what they're doing), and to memorize that specific series of actions by rote — but who have no desire to understand the more general skill behind the rote actions they're taking, such that they could perform related actions in any context other than the exactly memorized thing. In general, memorizing is easy, while learning a new skill is much, much harder. (And yet memorization without learning almost never "sticks", since there's no backing mental schema to encode the memorized steps in terms of.)

bewaretheirs 5y ago

There's a market niche for "steam generator" irons specifically for use when sewing (where you need the iron sporadically while assembling a garment from pieces). This is sort of a "pro-sumer" space. These typically have an offboard water tank and boiler that doubles as a stand for the hot iron. This also lets the iron itself be lighter in weight. A key feature for this market is the absence of the automatic shutoff that's commonly found in consumer irons.

thetis 5y ago
same answer from my perspective, i did not iron a lot during the last year because of lockdows but i see nice machines using steam. The sound is the same as a nespresso machine so i believe that it is based on the same steam generation technology, opposed to the brass tank steam generation process used in quality espresso machines & professional irons.

hughrr 5y ago

I have discovered the joy of having no clothes you need to iron. That’s real progress!

codazoda 5y ago
I buy a lot of black 100% polyester t-shirts for this reason. They don't need to be ironed and I don't have to decide what I'm wearing for the day.
- freeplay 5y ago
  Nothing more comfortable than a nice plastic shirt
  - 867-5309 5y ago
    the dolphins disagree
    - WJW 5y ago
      Dolphins don't wear shirts so they're hardly experts on the subject.
      - 867-5309 5y ago
        *shouldn't
  - DiffEq 5y ago
    These can be real problems when subject to a heat flash from a nuclear blast. They tend to melt right on you rather than block the heat.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ackbar03 5y ago

dheera 5y ago

Also, how do people get power for their irons? Do they backpack an inverter and huge lithium battery? Or are there chemically powered irons that they use?

rovr138 5y ago
Throw some coal in them and away they go. They weren’t always electric.
cpcallen 5y ago
They don't generally power their irons. It's more about the absurd photos than the pressed shirts.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  Extreme posing.

elorant 5y ago

Steam generating irons. I bought one a few years back and makes ironing so much easier, especially for shirts and trousers.

47 5y ago

https://helloeffie.com/ https://helloeffie.com/ Never used it myself but i have been curious if it actually works.

pronik 5y ago
More like "is it released after all those years". I've been very interested in the concept, but that's the last I've heard from them in the last 3-4 years.
- dtgriscom 5y ago
  Their blog was last updated almost two years ago.
nose 5y ago
A hot shower can achieve similar results: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowerScience/comments/302aqp/shower_steam_for_shirt_wrinkles/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_num_comments https://www.reddit.com/r/ShowerScience/comments/302aqp/showe...

cpcallen 5y ago

You can now get 'cordless' (electric) irons. Like an electric kettle, they heat up while sitting in the (decidedly non-cordless) base, but you don't have to contend with the cord while actually doing the pressing. I am a bit doubtful about whether they are much of an improvement over the usual corded kind, but the one person I know who has one insists that she greatly prefers it.

zwayhowder 5y ago
I used on in Japan years ago and had to wait about 5 years before they showed up in Australia at a reasonable price. Not worth replacing a perfectly good iron with, but if you accidently melt the cord to your current iron it's worth considering. It is definitely easier not having to worry about the cord tangling or pulling at your clothes.
bluGill 5y ago
My grandma used them for years. Hers weren't electric though, she had to put them on the wood stove to heat. The wood stove was next to her sewing machine, while the electric iron was in a different room, so it was a lot faster for her to pick up the iron than use the electric one. They didn't have automatic steam, but otherwise worked just as well.

dragontamer 5y ago

> Are there similar improvements in household appliances like irons? I bought a new washer/dryer recently. A bunch of bells and whistles, but... the "autosense the water level" feature is awesome, and likely saves water in the long run. It seems like washers use so much less water these days, its not like the old agitator models from 2000s which filled up a tank. Instead, modern washers thoroughly wet the clothes, add a bit of extra water at the bottom, and then mix vigorously (be it a front-load or top load, the HE washers all do this technique). This leads to lower water usage. I also ended up using much less soap per load (the first few times, I noticed the soap wasn't fully getting rinsed out, but the significantly less water usage means I also should use significantly less soap). > Where would one look for an industry overview? At least for generic household appliances, Consumer Reports is a non-profit survey / reviewer group. I dunno if they have much on irons themselves, but I haven't seen anything wrong with their reviews yet. I think there's a problem when the price goes too low. For something like $20, $50, or even $200 or $1000 appliances even... its not really worthwhile to review. Instead, you often have to just buy the thing and hope for the best. Maybe there's a specific professional group who is thinking about these tools and how to use them (chefs and cooking tools, or woodworkers + woodworking tools). But for things like irons or washers, or other household appliances... I don't think any such group exists outside of things like Consumer Reports. Still, I get my reviews on "Tide vs Persil", and other household items. I think "Wirecutter" is a competitor and some people say they've got good reviews too. In any case, Consumer Report's page on steam irons is here: https://www.consumerreports.org/products/steam-irons-28981/steam-iron-28728/recommended/ https://www.consumerreports.org/products/steam-irons-28981/s...

Qworg 5y ago
As an extension to the soap, there are single squeeze detergent bottles now that precisely meter on a one handed squeeze. So simple, yet phenomenally useful.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  I've seen those, but... how does the bottle know how big your washer is? Or how water efficient it is? A agitator "tub washer" uses 40-gallons of water to wash clothes. A modern front-loading HE washer uses 10-gallons. If you use the same amount of soap on both washers, you'll naturally be either... adding too much soap to the HE washer, or too little soap to the agitator washer. ------- Same thing with "Tide Pods". The idea of those things is "one pod per load", which removes the mental need to think of how much soap to add per load. But... once again, there's many different washers that all use different amounts of water. There's no way we really have a one-side fits all situation.

sydd 5y ago

> Are there similar improvements in household appliances like irons? Some examples that I know of: - modern robot vacuums, that can mop, use LIDAR etc. We have a pretty decent one, it works OK, but we still have to vacuum by ourselves every 2 weeks or so. - battery operated vacuums, irons, hair dryers etc. - smart homes -- automaticcally setting heat, window blinds - tons of gimmicky stuff like smart fridges, or water taps with touch screens. But I'd consider these just some quality of life improvements, not major time savers like washing things by hand vs a washing machine. IMO the next big thing will be household 3D printers when someone finds out how to make them safe and reliable for everyday use by non-technical people.

inasio 5y ago

My favourite advance from the last ten years has been around precision cooking. Sous vide is perhaps the most well known, but you can now get sensors to automatically control a bbq, steam and temperature controlled ovens are becoming more common/affordable (still waiting for a home-use Rational), etc. I love being able to cook with consistent quality and easily repeatable results.

dunham 5y ago
Yeah, Anova has something that claims to be a temperature controlled (+-0.5F) steam oven at the $600 price point. It's tempting, but I'm not sure I want to give up the counter space. If anyone here has one, I'm curious how well it works.

modzu 5y ago

the main advancement is planned obsolescence. well that, and the electric toothbrush

xarope 5y ago

back in the days when I used to have to wear a suit and tie, my wife bought me a laurastar. The hook was that they had a fan built into the board, that could suck (it could also blow and hence billow the material instead) the shirt to the board, so that ironing was easier.

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago

I'm pretty sure that if we managed to get extreme ironing into the olympics, we'd see increased innovation in this sector.

maguay 5y ago

A quick Amazon search doesn't seem to show them being popular in the States, but in Asia at least irons with separate water tanks where the iron itself doesn't get hot enough to burn clothes have become the new standard over the past few years.

u801e 5y ago

I don't know about the last 10 to 15 years, but 30 years ago, a lot of clothing brands had wrinkle free/resistant products which significantly reduced the need for ironing.