They can be found in dark corners, under stairs and shoved into cupboards; it seems few homes can escape the blight of crumpled piles of unironed clothes.

Emily Flanagan speaks to one woman who has turned the burden of ironing into a blossoming business.

SHIRLEY Hall was never a fan of ironing, but when she realised there were few others with the time or inclination for the endless chore, she realised she was onto a winning idea.

Now she has a team of eight women working flat-out at their ironing boards, pressing the clothes and bed-linen of time-strapped families, couples and single working women and men.

"People are so grateful. One man opened his door the other evening and he said, 'Oh, it's the ironing angel'. I'm grateful one person thinks that, my family used to think I was a monster when I was standing seething at the ironing table for hours."

Shirley, 41, now does little of the ironing for her business, Pressing Matters, having her hands full delivering the finished product and managing the firm she set up in 1999. She set up the organisation with the help of the Women into the Network (WIN) group, an association that helps women to start or develop businesses by providing them with ideas, skills, contacts and role models.

Shirley lives in Belmont, Durham and takes on customers from as far away as Chester-le-Street. But she regularly has to turn down trade from people living much further away.

Her working day mostly involves driving out to homes in her white van to pick up clean laundry, then dropping it off at the homes of the ironers, many of whom carry out the work in the evenings when their children are asleep.

The mother of four grown-up children puts the demand for her service down to the lack of time most people have for housework, as most households are now supported by two breadwinners. People also seem keen to hand over their clean washing because they simply don't like ironing.

"I think people either love it or hate it. If I have time I don't mind ironing, but it takes ages and is not particularly enjoyable, especially when you put loads of lovely piles of ironing in teenagers' bedrooms and they never move them. It's a bit of a thankless task."

She says most new customers ring up full of apologies for using her domestic service. Shirley says, "It's amazing how many people ring up and apologise and I say, 'that's what we're here for, don't feel guilty'. If when my family was young somebody had said to me there was an ironing service in my area, I would have had no qualms about going straight round there."

Ironing professionally is not the simple task it might seem. Before people are taken on to work for Pressing Matters, they first undergo the acid test, when Shirley gives them some of her own clothes and bed linen to be ironed.

"Some people have done their own ironing for years and then hand it back and sometimes I have to say, 'I'm sorry, I can't give that back to a customer'. When you're doing it for somebody who's paying, you have to do a little bit more."

Shirley denies she has turned the mundane task into an art form, but admits: "It's not for the faint-hearted. It does take a long time."