My parents owned laundromats my whole life, and I was being taken along to help install and service laundry equipment when I was pretty young.

Aside, being the one to climb down into the bulkheads in a laundromat is a good inventive to go to college.

I agree the laundry business is changing and probably declining overall, but I think 2005 is a bad baseline.

In the late '90s some laundry equiptment manufacturers put together unreasonable financing deals for building or renovating laundromats. If you see a laundromat from that time that has Maytag or Speed Queen signs out front it was probably built using one of those packages

The financing was sold with revenue or utility saving estimates that were completely out of line with reality, and many of those stores ended up collapsing under the debt and closing within 5-10 years of being built, and so probably had a peak number of them around 2005.

I saw this first hand having helped build then disassemble more than one store in Wisconsin and Illinois.

I live in a house with a washer and dryer.

After we had our first child there was a stretch where my wife and I were both sick for about 2 weeks and the laundry ended up building up significantly. We had probably 10 loads worth to catch up on and it was going to take all of at least one day, maybe two.

Threw it all in the car, went to the laundromat and had it done in 2 hours.

Laundromat's are now how I explain "the cloud" to non-technical people.

I live in Japan where Laundromats are often attached to Public Baths. I love going to my local, taking a soak while the load runs, and then coming out and having a coffee while my clothes go through the drier.

Not much to add.. just felt like professing my love for that Sunday arvo ritual.

I'm happy to say good riddance. When I was young I had to carry the family's laundry to the laundrymat, wash and fold it there, and carry it back, every other week at least. It takes hours, and at the time you couldn't do much while sitting there and waiting (nowadays I suppose you have smartphones and laptops). The whole thing was just an exhausting, dreaded hassle.

Now I can put laundry in, it's OK if I don't attend to it immediately, and finally I can hang-dry my laundry at home, which is not just hugely more climate-friendly but also helps prevent shrinkage. An undeniable win all around.

If you need a quiet few hours, a walk is just as fulfilling and much less obligatory :)

I hope this isn't entirely true. Granted, many laundromats are trashy with broken machines, but most are well-maintained. There are a few benefits that mean a lot to me.

I enjoy the old-school video games.

I enjoy the idea that a 2-hour load is not only cut in half, plus a multi-load wash is done in one hour.

But most of all, it's the last respite that I feel comfortable sitting down and doing absolutely nothing. It's generally quiet enough that I can just let my thoughts roam, watch the TV, play video games, or even take a short walk.

Maybe it's nostalgia, or that I never lived in a place with a well-functioning washer and drier, but for a short bit of do-absolutely nothing moments, I'll happily take the laundromat over the beach any day.

From the article:

Laundromats’ margins are further thinning as the price of water and sewage services have risen across the country. Utilities make up by far the heftiest of Lavanderia’s expenses, costing over $100,000 each year. Add to that the roughly $30,000 Tillman spends fixing his aging washers and dryers, and the laundromat is left with about $140,000 of profit each year, a number that continues to dwindle.

For a small business that pretty much runs itself, $140k / year actually seems like a pretty good profit to me. So I guess the issue is not so much that the laundromat business is unprofitable, but rather that compared to the value of the land it is sitting on, $140k/yr is a pretty terrible ROI.

One thing I didn't see mentioned in the article or here: a good laundromat typically has machines you wouldn't want to squeeze into your house. For instance, the one close to me has washers that accept 70+ pounds of laundry at once - great for washing blankets & other large items. Having that machine at home wouldn't make any sense, given that it's really only needed a couple times a year for an individual person.

I did the laundromat thing for four years in grad school, then ten years in various units with in-house washer and dryer, and then back to a laundromat for the last six years. It was undeniably convenient to be able to wash something on a moment's notice or at night or whatever, but I have to say I really like the fact that for a 2-3 hour investment of time every 3-4 weeks, I can get my laundry all done, at once, because the laundromat lets me work massively in parallel. And because I'm running it all in parallel, I can sort the loads differently for wash and dry: for washing, sort by colour, and for drying, by fabric delicacy (jeans can take high heat, anything with elastic stays on medium or low, etc etc). My landlord has said it's fine for me to buy a washer/dryer (there is a hookup in the basement) but I've found I'm really not in any rush to do so.

There's a laundromat in my town, and once a month a local church (the First Brotheren Church, I think) provides free laundry service for anyone who wants it. They provide the soap and the quarters and then while your laundry is getting washed they provide food to eat. It's a really great community outreach service.

I do hope all the laundromats don't go away, simply because I need one of the extra-large washers to be able to wash my comforter every so often.

You know, it's weird, but in other populous cities around the world, it's unusual to come across a laundromat (aside form hotels). I mean, if you look hard enough you can find some, but not easy.

I don't recall seeing them in east Asia and in Western Europe you can find some here and there --but definitely not very prevalent.

Plus, it's more convenient to have a facility in each unit, or failing that, in each apartment complex. You don't have to lug your stuff blocks away and have to interact with, at least in the US, odd elements, every so often.

On the other hand I do on occasion appreciate the big-loader units.

When I lived in the US, the lack of in-unit washing machines was quite unexpected. I had to pay $2 to use the shared (between 2 apartments) machine even though we as tenants paid the electric and water bills.

In rental accommodation in Sweden, a communal laundromat is the norm. You typically have between 2 and 10 machines, and you book your times. We also have tumble driers and drying closets and even manglers. As a database person, I batch my laundry just like operations in my transaction. Actually, the analogy I use when explaining batching is the dishwasher. Imagine picking up 1 plate at a time and putting it in the cupboard.

Plus with most laundermats still cash, many under report revenues for taxes. I presume thats where the cliche "money laundering" may have come from.

Do any places accept digital pay? Perhaps for a token machine. I notice may of the two buck car washes now accept electronic money.

Interestingly enough, a new laundromat just opened in my 30,000 person rural community.

It has always surprised me how rare, at least here in the bay, washer/dryer hookups are. I can't remember renting a place (even my shitty student studio) without them before.

When I lived in San Francisco, I paid for a laundry service. Picked up clothes and dropped them off a few days later.

Much cheaper than paying for an apartment with a washer/dryer!

Living in NYC opened my eyes to how awesome laundromats can be. All your laundry done at the corner store, coming back neat and folded for a dollar a pound.

Calgon, take me away.

Slapping a pair of $1-$3/load machines in the basement of a 8-unit building is easy money for landlords and they get to say that there's "laundry in building" and tack a couple hundred bucks onto the rend even if there's no practical way for all those people to make use of it.

It's weird you'd get planning permission for building residential buildings with units that don't have washer/dryer hookups in (some places in) the US. (At least my take away from TFA was that there are still new buildings being build like that)

I dunno, laundromats seem to be doing a-ok in the Los Angeles region. Even in nicer neighborhoods you can find one pretty dang quickly.

I use one and I enjoy it oddly enough-- its quick but just enough time to get some reading done or people watching.

I really don't see why more laundromats haven't added cafés and internet/wifi, or even small eateries. Or conversely, some cafés haven't added small laundromats.

TIL there is a Coin Laundry Association, and that they have a biannual conference in Las Vegas.