If you pay someone to do your ironing....

[18yearsoftrying]

How much do you/would you pay and would you prefer to pay "per item" or by the kilo? Would you be happy to pay different prices for different items eg - mens shirts V childrens t-shirt?

All info welcome - thanks!

I pay for how long I think it would take. A massive load of a weeks ironing would normally take me three hours so I pay for three hours of their time.

I've had ironing done on all three bases. I don't bother these days as DP takes his own shirts to a place near his work for their wash and iron service.

You know how much it's going to cost upfront on a per item basis - and different things do take different amounts of time and skill to iron. There's a launderette near work which does ironing. I found their price per shirt fine compared with other ironing services, but they charge 3 for a pair of trousers. Now if the trousers are jeans and require no creases then they require a lower level of skill and are quicker to do than a pair of suit trousers. I can iron trousers without creases in just a couple of minutes so I couldn't justify paying their price.

By weight, I found the ironing service would round things down and up for regular customers so it ended up being fairer - they charged per full kilo but if we had, say, 3.2 kilos one week and 4.6 the next, for example, we got charged for 8 kilos overall, not 9. They also levied an additional 20p charge per shirt, because they take more time to iron.

On a time basis, well I know how long it takes me and would expect a professional service to be quicker - I found that an odd way to do things. How do they ensure all the ironers work at the same pace, for example? The only place I've know do that was a service launderette where they had about 6 staff all employed to iron.

Thankyou for the posts! I have a lot to think about.

The biggest issue I had with any ironing service was that our requirement was irregular - sometimes every ten days sometimes once a fortnight or so and even with notice they couldn't collect/drop off when we wanted and I ended up rushing to collect half the time.

With hindsight it would have been better to put a regular arrangement in place.