Ironing was a particularly galling waste of time. You'd spend twenty minutes pressing one shirt front and back, spraying starch and getting the creases sharp, but once the man of the house put it on, it would wrinkle as soon as he bent an elbow; plus, you couldn't even see whether the danged shirt was ironed or not under his suit coat.
In Jeannette Walls' "Half Broke Horses," the act of ironing is portrayed as an exasperating chore. It requires significant time and effort, as one meticulously presses a shirt, applying starch to achieve the perfect creases. Despite this hard work, the moment the wearer puts on the shirt, it quickly becomes wrinkled with even the slightest movement, emphasizing the futility of the task.
This frustration is heightened by the fact that the result of all that labor often goes unnoticed. The shirt becomes hidden beneath a suit coat, rendering the ironing almost pointless. Walls captures the irony of dedicating so much effort to something that is rendered invisible and useless, making readers reflect on the arbitrary nature of certain domestic tasks.