I have to be honest, I am not too hip on most household chores. I experience no joy from running a vacuum and fail to find the fun in ridding the refrigerator of slowly rotting fruits and vegetables. As far as I am concerned cobwebs provide much needed housing for spiders and far be it from me to evict them. The one household chore I absolutely love though, is mangling. A mangle is a clever mechanical laundry aid that was originally developed to wring water from wet wash. In Austria it is common to mangle away wrinkles in bed sheets, tablecloths, kitchen towels and anything else that would benefit from being pressed through a hot rotary wheel. The act of mangling is a special skill that takes years to perfect. It helps to have music playing (I find mangling best with opera) and for some reason a glass of wine helps to set the perfect ambiance. I always mangle on “langsam” or slow verses the quick “schnell” setting to be assured consistent results. There is something both soothing and mesmerizing about slowly feeding the crumpled linens into the drum and retrieving a crisply pressed masterpiece from the other end. I could mangle for hours (and often have), casually stepping on the foot pedal and watching the wisps of steam slip through the air. Mangling is Austrian meditation.
Our Austrian mangle is probably 50 or 60 years old and continues to press with the best of them (knock on wood). Manufactured by Miele, you can still buy a home version of the Miele Rotary Iron in the USA. I have never managed to justify the $2000 price tag but it certainly sits at the top of my dream-list if I ever win the lottery!
I find there is nothing more luxurious then slipping into a freshly mangled bed and something oddly comforting about drying dishes with a pressed towel. Mangled napkins make you sit up straighter at the dinner table and a perfectly pressed tablecloth makes fine napery seem like a requirement for dining. For me, a lack of wrinkles means I am in Salzburg. Make sure you notice those divine sheets when you slip into your first nights snooze in Salzburg as well!
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