Background:
Ironing boards are large and unwieldy—even the ones that are just the board surface, without any folding legs. Fortunately, we can solve this problem.
Proposal: A rollable ironing board
Instead of having a large single-surface ironing board, we could either have a rollable ironing board made of a flexible material or (if flexible materials did not prove to be sufficiently heat-proof and rigid for ironing purposes) an ironing board made of a set of interlocking slats.
Fig 1: Top: this is what a standard ironing board looks like. Bottom: if we segment the ironing board (blue-green vertical lines), we can fold the ironing board along these lines to roll it up into a cylinder.
Fig 2: The ironing board being rolled up. In this figure, yellow/orange indicates the main ironing surface, and blue indicates the non-ironable bottom side.
Fig 3: Top: When the board is fully unrolled, it might have a tendency to want to roll in the other direction. In order to keep the board rigid, there would be a telescoping arm on the underside (seen in orange here) that would lock into place and keep the ironing board from rolling backwards while ironing. Alternatively, each slat could have a small metal tab on the blue side that would prevent the board from rolling in the other direction. This would remove the need for the telescoping arm, but would prevent the ironing board from rolling up as tightly as it would otherwise. Bottom: telescoping arm detail.
PROS: This impressive ironing board will save you many hours of looking at an unsightly ironing board propped up in your laundry room or hall closet.
CONS: Sure, you COULD just buy an “ironing mat” instead, but would that be as fun?
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 
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