Our new apartment has washer/dryer connections and we bought a used washer and dryer for $150. Prior to that we were doing about five loads a week at the laundromat. It is pretty easy to figure out how much it cost us to do our laundry at the laundromat. The cost was $1.50 per load to wash and $1.25 per load to dry for a total cost per load of $2.75. Taking that total times 5 we were spending $13.75 a week at the laundromat.
Finding the cost of using our own washer and dryer is a little harder to figure. I found a website that has a laundry costs calculator. Using the calculator I determined that we have a total cost per load of $0.53 or $2.65 a week. Our laundry costs are low because we don’t have to pay water and we only use cold water.
We are saving $11.10 a week by having our own washer and dryer. A little math shows that in 14 weeks our washer and dryer will have paid for themselves. It actually is an even better deal than that because I place a high value on not having to spend several hours each week at the laundromat.
The next step is to be even more frugal and reduce the use of the dryer and the volume of laundry.