5 Handy Hotel Hacks With Ironing Boards

There's an easy way to make your hotel room feel more organized and homey. Here's why your ironing board is a travel hero. 

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Ironing boards are hotel heros! Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

Have you seen the movie “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”? There’s a great scene in which the lovelorn Peter gets some unusual advice. Family members tell him to iron his shirts—even his t-shirts!—in order to feel better. I won’t spoil the ending, but let’s just say it takes more than sharp creases to turn Peter’s vacation around. 

Though their advice didn’t help Peter, it has worked for me—albeit under less dramatic circumstances. 

Whenever I’m feeling a bit rundown on the road, I know that some serious laundering and even the occasional ironing session will help put a spring in my step. Since those occasions are few and far between, I usually ignore hotel room ironing boards. However, a recent podcast had me rethinking ironing boards in general—and how handy they can be for travellers. 

Here are five great reasons to set up your hotel ironing board on each and every trip, even if you’re not trying to rebound from a broken love affair! 

It forces you to snoop through the closet

Would you snoop through these closets? Photo by @plqml // felipe pelaquim on Unsplash

I rarely open a hotel room closet. In fact, I can stay in a room for days without bothering to investigate. I never properly unpack my suitcase and I don’t exactly travel with the kind of wardrobe that necessitates careful hanging. However, I’ve come to realize that I’m missing out on a lot of valuable amenities that I’ve actually paid for as part of my room. With the large, awkward ironing board set up elsewhere, I can easily peruse the rest of the closet’s contents. 

I often discover little luxuries that I’m happy to put to good use now that they’re at my fingertips, like slippers or a shoe-polishing cloth. Additionally, things that I would never have bothered searching for, like a spare blanket, become easily accessible and help solve minor irritants (like noise drifting in from the hall—stuffing that spare blanket into the door crack makes all the difference in the world!). Plus, every hotel closet contains something I’m almost always in need of, a sturdy plastic laundry bag. Treasures, treasures, treasures!

It’s a cozy sorting station

Who doesn't travel with a topographical map and ordnance surveys? Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

I LOVE the sleek, streamlined minimalism of hotel rooms, but they’re not exactly cozy. Sometimes it feels downright wrong to make them messy. Other times, I worry that they are so large I will forget something if I spread out my gear. An ironing board is a perfect surface to reorganize your travel supplies, sort your receipts, and collect the items you need for your day bag.

I used to use a collapsible travel tray to corral all my loose change, spare keys, and extra dining coupons, until I started leaving it in my suitcase—d’oh! But if I tell myself that, no matter what, all odds and ends are always on the ironing board, that’s exactly where I put them. Travel is messy and that means tickets, receipts, coins, keycards, coupons, and a daily assortment of quirky odds and ends. It’s nice to have a place for them.

It’s the standing desk you didn’t know you needed

Accurate representation of travel writing life. Photo by Damir Spanic on Unsplash

I owe a tip of the hat to Gretchen Rubin’s podcast (Happier with Gretchen Rubin) for this one. One of her listeners suggested using an ironing board as a makeshift standing desk while working from home during the COVID-19 global health crisis. It got me thinking: Why couldn’t this work in a hotel room as well?

​While standing desks aren’t a regular part of my work routine, many people swear by them. Users report that standing while you work improves circulation, eases back pain, improves posture, and even burns calories. It wasn’t much of a leap for me to imagine how refreshing it would be to use a standing desk after a long day of sitting in an airplane and how standing desks could be a great improvement on hotel desks, which I’ve often found rather awkward and uncomfortable.

As Rubin notes in her podcast, the ironing board-as-standing-desk isn’t perfect. You might be too short or too tall to make the setup work comfortably, and cheap ironing boards often wobble. Still, I think it’s well worth considering.

It’s a great dining table (if you’re careful)

Trying to contain the mess. Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash

When I first read this interview with Jane Goodall, I was struck by how frugal and independent she is in hotels. She brings her own supplies to boil water if there isn’t a kettle and she saves extra buns (and brings her own Marmite!) so she can have an easy breakfast on her own terms. In a different world, I could imagine her as one of those ultra-crafty backpackers who make their own grilled cheese sandwiches and other gourmet fare using nothing more than an ironing board, an iron, and some aluminum foil.

While I haven’t descended to that level of travel hacking just yet, your ironing board makes a great dining room table, provided that you’re careful. It’s the ideal place to set your large, awkward room service tray, freeing up your actual desk so you have a clear surface to eat on. Pushed up against the wall, it’s also not a bad place to store snacks and packaged food. But beware—this isn’t the spot to set up a messy buffet of saucy takeout food. And if your food is greasy (I’m looking at you, pizza boxes), put down a towel or other barrier to prevent accidental stain transfers.

Ironing boards are laundry superstars in unexpected ways!

The travel dream: Clean, DRY, folded laundry. Photo by Sarah Brown on Unsplash

On a busy trip that sees me hotel hopping every night, I often run dangerously close to having no clean laundry, because I’m not in a position where hand-washed clothing will dry overnight. An ironing board is a perfect helper. Set up over an air vent, next to a fan, or beside the radiator, it lets you safely hang a wide variety of clothing items (if you pilfer the closet hangers and position them on the edges of the board). Damp clothing receives maximum airflow without risk of blocking the vents or overheating on the rad. And while it may seem obvious, I nearly always forget that I can dramatically speed up the drying process by simply ironing still-damp items.

Ironing feels much less tedious when you’re getting more out of it than simply making a cotton shirt look presentable. You’re renewing your entire trip, filling your bag with crisp, clean clothing, and heading back on the road looking slightly less like a ragamuffin.

However, I can’t say whether or not this will change your romantic fortunes! Like Peter, you might have to take more drastic measures.


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