How To Prolong The Life of Your Iron

Prolong the Life of Your IronWhen it comes to ironing, there are two types of people, those who do it all in one go and those who only iron when they need the garment. Whichever category you fall into, as with all your household appliances it is important to make sure that you maintain and regularly clean your iron.

Why Clean Your Iron:

Although your iron only really comes into contact with clean clothes it will need cleaning on a regular basis, and for two main reasons.

  1. To avoid staining fabrics. When your iron heats up limescale deposits can transfer from the soleplate to your clothes, resulting in stains occurring.
  2. To keep vents clear. A build up of limescale deposits will clog the steam vents on your soleplate, making ironing harder as steam cannot get through to ease the creases.

In addition to the above reasons, cleaning your iron will also enable it to be kept in working order for longer, and help prolong its efficiency. This in-turn helps save you money in both the short and the long term.

How To Clean Your Iron:

Before you begin cleaning your iron, you should firstly check the manufacturers’ guidelines, as these will provide more in-depth details as to the best way to clean your iron. You should also ensure that before carrying out any cleaning tasks on your appliance that it is switched off, unplugged and cooled down.

Cleaning Inside Your Iron:

If your iron doesn’t automatically de-scale with the use of a filter, then it may be necessary to clean the inside, ensuring you remove any impurities left behind by hard water. Such impurities can lead to limescale, which in-turn can hinder the performance of the appliance.

Although there are a number of home remedies for cleaning the inside of your iron, such as mixing vinegar with water; at BuySpares we would recommend using a dedicated cleaning product such as the Oust All Purpose Liquid Descaler.

By following the instructions on the descaler, within 10 minutes your iron will be restored to an almost new like state; helping to prolong the life of the appliance.

If your iron comes with a filter, make sure that you change this regularly!

Cleaning The Soleplate:

As important as cleaning the inside of your iron to help reduce the risk of limescale build up, is the cleaning of the soleplate. This is the part of your iron which comes into contact with your clean clothes, and if left without being cleaned can cause stains.

Failure to clean the soleplate on your iron can also lead to limescale blocking the steam vents, as mentioned above, making the task of ironing harder and more time consuming.

The cleaning of your iron’s soleplate will depend on the material that it is made from. For example, if you have a non-stick soleplate it’ll be possible to clean it using a soft cloth, warm water and mild detergent.

A recommended method for cleaning the soleplate on your iron is to utilising the cleaning formula within iron cleaning pads which remove unwanted residue from the soleplate.

By cleaning both the inside and outside of you iron, you can ensure that not only will you be able to easily remove those creases from your clothes when you iron them, but you can prolong the life of your appliance.

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