It's becoming apparent to me that I may have missed the laundry memo. A few weeks ago, I related an incident regarding some lost keys. While a few people shared stories about losing their own keys, far more people had a different question for me: you iron?

Yes. I iron. I rarely do more than pull my hair up into a pony or a messy bun. I almost never wear makeup. Most mornings, I run out of the house with my breakfast tossed into my purse, to be eaten at some point, maybe, if I'm lucky. But, I will never, ever leave the house wearing wrinkles, even if it means losing sleep.Apparently, there is some magical, mystical way of taking your clothes out of the dryer so that they don't wrinkle. My high-tech, space shuttle launching dryer even has a little button called "wrinkle prevent." I haven't figured out how this works. I get the idea behind it: You take your warm clothes out and hang them or fold them neatly while they're warm and they will not be wrinkly.The problem is that I don't have time to babysit the dryer. Half the time, I forget I even have a load in there, until I have my arms full of wet laundry from the washer, and I fumble the door open and oh look, dry laundry that I now have to maneuver out of the dryer before I can start drying the wet stuff. While I do laundry almost every single day, the one time I did try to use the wrinkle prevent button was, of course, the one time that I skipped a day. I remembered only when one of the kids piped up and said they couldn't sleep in their room anymore because the dryer kept turning on and making a noise. (One of the geniuses that owned our home previously converted the small nursery off the master bedroom into the laundry room, which is great when you're schlepping kids' clothes and bedding and towels, but not so great when the washing machine leaks on the third floor.)"Permanent press" and "no iron" are the two biggest lies I've ever heard. Anything billed as "permanent press" may as well be subtitled "permanently scratchy," according to my kids. I have found only one shirt maker whose shirts truly live up to the claim of no iron, and look crisp whether I iron them or not. They are also ridiculously expensive, and never on sale. That company knows it has a gold mine there. The WH gets a new one every Christmas. I guess that's not really fair, since it's really a gift I give myself.Even when I do manage to get my warm cotton T-shirts out of the dryer and fold them neatly, they will still have the fold marks on them when I go to wear them. So, out comes the iron again. What about pleats? I have never been able to figure out how to fold or hang E's school skirts so that the pleats are sharp. I always feel better touching them up with the iron. I don't care who you are, no one takes anything linen out of the dryer without needing to press it before wearing it. Fifteen minutes later, when I crush my freshly ironed linen pants with the seat belt, I ask myself why I bothered.I also ask myself why I bothered when the kids take the neatly pressed school uniforms from the bottom of their beds and apparently, roll them up in a ball and jump up and down on them several times before they get dressed every morning. The only interest that any of them has taken in the ironing process is the "stream" button, which they also refer to as the "water gun" feature.When I was in college, I would break out my portable ironing board and iron on a Sunday afternoon. One of my dorm mates was from France, and he was finicky about his clothing, as well. He would pay me $20 a week to iron a few pairs of pants for him.Jeans seem to be one of the few things that I can hang up and don't need to iron, so when he asked me to iron jeans for him, I ironed them just like I ironed my dress pants, putting a crease down the front. He wasn't exactly happy, but I refunded his money and learned how to iron jeans the right way.So, why do I do it? Some people get up early to apply several layers of foundation and beauty products to help hide their wrinkles, I guess I just find it more therapeutic to press them out of my clothing.Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.