Bye, Bye Ironing Board

"We'll only be a here a few more months," was my mental anthem... the one I cued when I looked at my despised orange kitchen table, when I noted our increasingly battered common entry way in our apartment building, and when I looked at our pathetic excuse for a ironing board.

We bought the unsightly ironing board four years ago, after we gave up searching for quality (fearing perhaps there was none to be found in a land that seemed filled with bright cheap plastic things, and painfully inadequate household goods.)

The ironing board we ended up with was cheap.... in every sense of the definition.

It had a silver cover with dogs on it.

From day one it had to be shimmed with something (most recently, ayi has resorted to a folded face cloth... which again brings the anthem to mind!)

The thing about our flimsy ironing board, the one of substandard quality, which seemingly was designed for an elf is that I actually really never needed to use it. (As fortune would have it, both of our domestic helpers, who have done nearly all of our ironing over the four years, stand barely five feet!)

Our first elfin-like ayi was a seamstress. She thoughtfully, without even a mention, whipped up pale pink cover that matched the walls, and kept the unsightly dogs at visual bay.

(Now about those dogs: I know that domestic appliances in the West often have interesting themes... think of the last time you perused your ironing board aisle at Wal-Mart and saw all those unsightly floral patterns... unsightly, that is, until you compare them to an ironing board covered with a dog pattern. Who thinks of this stuff?? I also have a lovely dustbin I keep on our balcony with image of a cat on it. Who dreams of cats and dogs as harmonious with domestic housekeeping bliss?) But, I digress...

So when we decided we would extend our stay in China, there were certain objects in our home I had to reckon with. First on the list... the ironing board. I splurged on a sturdy number, one with good rubber feet, and a nifty space to store the iron. It has a neutral toupe cover, and was certainly designed outside of this country.

A further bad sign about just how bad the original ironing board was, was the fact that no one wanted it. Ayi most probably never wanted to see the thing again (and most likely has better uses for her personal collection of face cloths.) Our driver, even, who never likes to see anything go to waste-- their home has been the happy recipient of our former cream and tan loopy area rug (the one our girls found a special fascination in unraveling, loop by synthetic loop); our first vacuum... the Qingdao made sucking machine with a cord as long as my arm (which, in case you were wondering, completely lived up to the sucking part of its name); The lovely orange leatherette chairs which originally complemented the aforementioned orange eyesore. Even after accepting these things, he took a pass on the ironing board. Wise man.

The less wise man was the newspaper delivery guy who pulled it out of the trash in front of our building this morning. He carefully placed it under the flap of his saddle bags, the short wimpy frame extending well beyond a limit we would feel comfortable with in the US, kick started his pollution producing transportation, and motored off down the sidewalk before I could warn him about what he was getting himself into!