Use your Rowenta steam iron to soften and sanitize your wind instruments' reeds

If you've ever been to a band or orchestra concert, I'm sure you've seen the weird process of those that play wind instruments. They look as if their trying to get a bad taste out of their mouths.

Well, that episode you witnessed was an attempt to lubricate and soften the reed that helps give the instrument, a flute for instance, the ability to make the sound it does. And nothing is as practical and ever present than good ole saliva, Pretty gross, huh?

Well, you can imaging how smelly those slithers of wood can get. Not to mention how short of a life they can have with all that drying out from saliva slathering sessions. You can stretch your reed budget by putting this into practice. Use your versatile Rowenta steam iron to sanitize, deodorize and lubricate your reeds between concerts.

Fill your Rowenta steam iron and put it on the highest heat and steam setting. Place the reeds in a small container. Hover the steam iron an inch or two over the reeds and allow the steam to stream over them. Use the steam burst button to create more steam.

Once the iron's reservoir tank is half full, put about two table spoons of water in the container and continue to steam the reeds. Once the water has emptied out of the tank, while the reeds are warm, place the reeds in a seal able plastic bag to stay moist. This will also help to keep the reeds from splitting and curling up prematurely.