"I'm not sure which concept crystalizes this notion for you"

Because the parent commenter implied it takes an hour of full time work to do laundry, which implies having to go to a laundromat.

But yeah, plenty of apartments in cities have washer/dryers.

Using national averages for electricity and water, it only costs $0.76 to complete a load of laundry (washing & drying).

What figures were you using? I'd like to put the current New South Wales, Australia electricity price into the equation.

My calculations are here[1].

Basically, $2/1000 gallons of water & $0.10/kWh for electricity (I did not bother calculating for gas dryers) were the most recent US averages I could find, and that was rounding up (e.g., electricity was actually > $0.09 but < $0.10).

I used this calculator[2], and plugged in appropriate values where I could find most current data.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6107020 [2] http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/laundry.html

Sorry, I missed your initial comment.

Even with lowball estimates, my cost for washing is double yours - 30+c/kWh... sigh.