New Job Skill

When I met a Russ he only owned three work shirts. He wore one, was washing one and was letting one hang to dry everyday. I thought this was crazy especially since it put a crimp in our social life because he needed to always have time to a wash shirt every night. Since he only had three shirts he did not have enough to take to the Chinese Laundry at the end of his street, not that he had ever known you could take shirts to the laundry.
The first gift I ever gave him was ten shirts for his birthday and an introduction to the nice lady at the Chinese laundry. It changed his life in a big way, only second to asking me to marry him.
Last night Russ asked me if I could take his shirts to the laundry this morning since he had a six AM flight to DC and needed some of them for a conference in San Francisco on Monday. Of course I could do this small errand for him. He left five shirts on the bed.
This morning I got up and went to work out later than I usually do. I got home at 10:20 and discovered the shirts I had forgotten about. I rushed over to the laundry, but I had missed the shirt deadline and no shirts are done on Saturdays. “I guess I’m washing shirts,” I told the gal at the laundry. She looked at me like I couldn’t do it.
The one thing that Russ has become addicted to in laundry shirts is starch. I knew that he has to speak on a stage next week and I wanted him to look his best. Spray starch was not going to do the trick. So I went to the store to buy liquid starch called Sta-Flo. The Harris Teeter carried no Sta-Flo or any other liquid starch. I went to Target, none there. I looked online at Walmart, none in the local stores only for delivery on Wednesday. Crap.
I turned to You Tube. “How can I starch shirts at home like the laundry.” Very few answers. What? Has the whole world stopped buying 100% cotton shirts? Or has no one else missed the laundry cutoff?
Eventually I found the recipe for homemade starch. Guess what it is? Corn starch and water! I whipped up a batch, but how to use it? The debate on the internet is sketchy, I eventually washed the shirts on delicate in the washer and took them out and soaked them one at a time in the stachy water and wrung them out, hung them up wet and when they had dried just a bit then ironed them. It took forever, but they turned out almost as good as the laundry, not quite as stiff. I probably could have added a little more starch, but I was worried about leaving white starch residue on the shirts.  
Now I have a new skill I can add to my linked in profile, laundress. It hopefully was a one day job. Next time I will make sure I put the shirts in the car the night before so I don’t forget them.