This is one of my mangle ironers. It is also know as a flatwork ironer. You might remember the smaller home version of this if your grandmother had one. You insert the wet wrinkled tablecloth onto the rolling belts. It then rolls through a series of smaller rollers and then over one large steel drum that is heated from the inside by jets of flame. It comes out the bottom dry and ironed. It is a simple but indispensable piece of equipment for anyone with a large laundry. You can operate yourself if you are doing small items like pillow cases (who doesn’t love an ironed pillow case?) or napkins. However, on larger items like tablecloths and sheets it is a two man operation as you have to spread open the fabric full width. I tried to do my sheets one Saturday all by myself. It didn’t work out so well. First, my arms are too short to hold open a king size sheet. Second, I could not insert the one side of the sheet and then run fast enough to the other side to get it into the machine before it all started to wrinkled up. Third, when you fold it small enough to get it into the machine with your slow, short arms it is so thick that it takes about 10 runs through the rollers to dry it. I sleep on wrinkled sheets.
Of course you could always use one of these I suppose.
