I got excited about buying my first good belt,¹ so I bought some nice button-down and button-up shirts. They came out of the dryer embarrassingly wrinkled. Like I tried playing it cool wearing one the next day, and a coworker explicitly noted how wrinkled my shirt looked!

To avoid owning too much stuff, like an iron, an ironing board, and all that, I researched a steamer to remove the wrinkles. Fortunately, I found the right model like new on eBay, so I ordered it, excited to steam away my problems.

Once it arrived, I gathered a batch of shirts and the steamer, and brought them to the laundry room of my apartment building. However, something happened: nothing. I steamed and I steamed for 10, 20, 30 minutes, and the wrinkles stayed on the shirt, mocking me! Only I was getting properly steamed, physically, like sweaty, and emotionally, like I immediately returned the steamer and started researching an iron.