This Is How You Can Clean Your Iron

If you want to clean your iron, you have to make sure that the non-stick coating that may be present is not damaged.

You don’t need expensive special products to clean your iron ; you usually only need things from your household that you would otherwise use for other purposes, such as toothpaste. Find out how and with what means you can clean your iron if it no longer slides over the laundry and is dirty on the underside.

When do you have to clean the iron?

You should always clean your iron if you notice dirt on the running surface or clogging of the steam nozzles. If the tread is dirty, the dirt adhering to it can also be transferred to the garment during ironing. The surface should therefore always be perfectly clean.

If the steam nozzles are clogged, less steam escapes from them, which worsens the ironing result. Deposits often come off the nozzles during ironing and fall as crumbs on the garment. In the worst case, the textile can be soiled or destroyed.

If you want to clean your iron, be careful not to damage the running surface. An iron should not only straighten your laundry, but should also do it comfortably and without risk.

A scratched outsole of the iron can get caught in sensitive textiles such as silk and roughen the fabric and thus damage it. The sliding surface must therefore always be protected from scratches so that it glides over textiles without resistance.

Try the following methods to clean your iron:

Wet towel

As a first aid for your iron, you can always have a wet terry towel ready when ironing. As soon as you notice that the iron is soiled or stuck together by starch, ironing aid or other things, run the hot iron and pressure over the wet towel several times.

The water vapor from the towel in combination with the coarse terry cloth ensures that the fresh dirt cannot burn in over the long term.

washing powder

This method is particularly suitable for residues of starch on Teflon-coated irons. To do this, sprinkle some washing powder on your ironing board and dampen it. This works great with the laundry sprayer or the spray function on the iron itself.

Then run the cold iron several times over the washing powder with pressure. Then wipe off the remains of the washing powder from the iron with a damp cloth until the sole looks like new again.

toothpaste

Irons whose running surface is coated with Teflon are particularly sensitive to scratches. Be careful not to iron over zippers and avoid metal parts when ironing.

Smaller scratches in the Teflon coating should be polished away so that they do not lead to more of the coating becoming detached from the scratch.

This works quite well with toothpaste, which you apply to the cold sole of the iron with a damp cloth. Carefully polish up the affected area and wipe the toothpaste thoroughly and completely with a clean, damp cloth.

Vinegar or citric acid

Instead of using an expensive descaler, you can also try descaling your iron with vinegar or citric acid . Please only use white vinegar or citric acid, never lemon juice or other types of vinegar such as balsamic vinegar!

You can buy citric acid in the drugstore as a powder, please use it according to the instructions on the packaging and do not dose higher!

If you don’t have white vinegar, you can also use vinegar essence and dilute it. As with citric acid, the same applies to vinegar: do not use too high a concentration, too high a concentration of acid could damage your iron!

Fill the liquid into the water tank instead of water and let the acid take effect. Then vaporize all of the liquid using the steam nozzles, regularly running over an old terry towel soaked with vinegar or citric acid.

Limescale deposits in the water tank and on the steam nozzles can be prevented by always using distilled water. Never fill in tap water! This eliminates the hassle of having to clean your iron because limescale deposits have formed from tap water.

salt

If the underside of the iron is dirty or encrusted, with a little luck you can be successful with salt! To do this, pour a layer of salt on the ironing board and heat the iron. Then run several times over the salt with pressure and rub off the encrusted dirt.

If the sole of the iron is Teflon-coated, do not apply too much pressure to avoid damaging the coating! Never use sugar because it will melt and ruin your iron with caramel!