My wife called yesterday to say that she was at a shop, confronting a dilemma. She had to choose between a 2100 watt iron and a 1400 watt model. The salesperson told her that the 2100 watt iron was better because it was much more powerful.

I don’t like to make such decisions without thorough research, but I knew that our old iron was ruining clothes and needed to be replaced soon. So I gave her an answer so obviously in keeping with my reputation that she could have saved herself the call: “Buy the one that uses less electricity.”

Still, I worried that in my constant insistence on saving energy I had saddled my household with an underpowered iron that would need hours of extra labour to press out the wrinkles in our laundry. Ha! I checked the base of our current iron. This is an appliance so beloved of my housekeeper that she resisted its replacement even though was damaging clothes. The label read 1100 watts.

This is a constant theme of modern life. The mantra that more powerful must be better has soaked into every purchasing decision, from vacuums to vehicles. One of my best decisions in recent years was to ignore a salesperson’s advice to trade up from a 750 watt pump to a 1100 watt pump for my pool. Thousands of South Africans drive cars capable of driving 200 kilometres per hour on the German autobahns, even as a growing army of camera traps ensures that all of that extra horsepower is wasted. Philips, which made both of my irons, sells 11 models of steam irons in South Africa today, and every one of them boasts a higher wattage than my old iron.

My advice when confronted with the option to trade-up in power is simple. Resist. If the old iron worked just fine, did it really need to be using 90 percent more electricity? Clearly not. Our new 1400 watt iron works so beautifully that my housekeeper has forgotten she ever wanted to keep the old one.