When you take a realistic look at the costs of doing your laundry at home, you can see why you may not be saving as much money as you think and that a laundry service can make a lot more sense. As an example, let’s look at a typical family of four where both parents are employed full time. If you were to summarize all of the costs associated with doing laundry for a family of four at home for an entire year, you will see that it adds up to a thousand dollars or more, depending on the lifestyle of the family. On the surface a thousand dollars may seem like an exaggeration, but if you do a proper analysis and include all of the costs, such as the annualized cost of purchasing and maintaining your laundry appliances, the utilities and laundry supplies to run them for 12 months, and the cost of the space in your home, you will see that the numbers add up quickly. In addition to these hard costs, it isn’t unusual for a typical family of four to have four to six hours a week involved in physically doing the home laundry. That may not seem like a lot of time but at 5 hours per week someone in the household is spending over 250 hours per year keeping up with the laundry. That’s the equivalent of over six 40-hour work weeks. That is a great deal of time that you spend at a job you can only save so much at and never be promoted.
Now let’s take a look at household income. As an example, the average household income in the typical Cincinnati suburbs of West Chester and Liberty Township is projected to be about $125,000 in 2020. At that pay rate an average earner in a two-income household would earn a little over $7,200 for that same six weeks at their full-time job. Our laundry service would cost a family of four somewhere around $100 a week, or let’s just say about $5,000 for a full year. That cost, less the thousand dollars or so it costs to do your laundry at home, leaves you with only $4000 that you can actually save by doing your laundry at home. At a savings of $4000 annually for six weeks of work you will earn an effective pay rate of only a little more than half of what you would earn at your day job.
With all of this in mind, does it really make sense for you to work the six additional weeks in your off hours during the year and spend the additional thousand dollars to get the laundry done at home? Why would you give up six weeks of your hard-earned free time to work at nearly half of your normal pay rate? Especially after working your full time job all week? Or looking at it another way, would you give up about 3-4% of your annual household earnings for six more weeks of quality time with your kids, with your spouse, building your career, or just living a better life, whatever that means to you, having the ability to invest that time in something with a more meaningful return to you every year moving forward? Your time and your family time on this earth is finite and valuable. Rethink your laundry. It will provide a better life for you and those around you.
