sharing is caring until it isn't

Having travelled mostly for work the past decade or so, I've learned to pack light. But this doesn't always work for personal travel. For example, I've learned that, when visiting Puerto Rico, my Canadian body is unaccustomed to the heat, and I will sweat through a shirt (or two!) per day.

Travelling through Japan last month, I used the laundromat for the first time. I discovered that soap is included (you're actually asked to not use your own, since it can damage the industrial machines) and that the cycles are pretty quick: a 25 kg load of clothing can be washed and dried in under an hour, all for about $10 Canadian. For future trips, I plan on bringing a fraction of the clothes and just relying on laundromats instead.

We saw lots of locals using the machines, which makes sense given smaller living spaces compared to North American ones. But, I wondered how the economics worked for Torontonians. A quick search online showed that the cost for 25 kg of laundry was double the cost here, around $20 for self-service. Busy Torontonians could get their laundry washed, dried, and folded for around $2 a pound, or $110 for 25 kg.

It's obviously more affordable to do your laundry at home in Toronto. Looking online, washer and dryer sets are around $1,500-$2,500, and they should last about a decade. Online estimates suggest a single person does about 1,000 lbs of laundry a year, or about 450 kg, which would be $360 at a laundromat. Interestingly enough, depending on your energy costs, it could be $100 a year to run your washing machine, so spreading out the cost of your machine, it's more the convenience factor for having your own machines.

What makes me more curious is whether or not we all need our own machines. What I mean is that most people's washers and dryers remain unused, so would it ever make sense to essentially share one set of machines and divvy up the costs?

Now, obviously some things change when you have four or five households sharing one set of machines: the machines will run down faster since they're constantly in use, and you need to coordinate schedules especially if you're having to enter one household to use them. (This is where warmer climates may have an advantage, when you can situate your machines in an outdoor shed, for example.) What I'm describing is essentially a street-level laundromat.

The gambit here is, let's say machines wearing down are a combination of number of uses AND time itself. So, five families sharing a set of machines might save a few hundred dollars a year–and whether it's worth the inconvenience of not being able to just wash and dry your clothes whenever is subjective.

What makes this example interesting is that it can be applied to far easier things to share: yard tools, bulk pantry items, workout equipment, perhaps even wifi. There was a time when cell phones, before they became smartphones, meant families were paying three or four times more for individual plans, versus sharing a homeline. There was obviously convenience involved, but also mirrored a trend of individualizing expenses.

Now, realistically, I'm not expecting families to rush out and start splitting costs across multiple households. That's just not the North American way. Just look at how people here are willing to pay for enormous gas-guzzling SUVs just because they want more personal space and higher vantage point while driving.

Yet, also, in an increasingly bifurcated consumer market, where the rich are getting much richer, while the rest of us are not, I think it's instructive to start creatively thinking of ways to continue pulling back expenses.

Marketers and social media platforms (fuelled by advertising dollars) have done a fantastic job persuading us that the only way to live is with excess. I'll also concede that it feels unfair that those at the top, with the system skewed towards them, get to live lives of indulgence and abundance, while the 99% have to contemplate splitting the wifi bill.

But, what I think softens this is the sustainability angle. Most people would agree that we have an incorrect mix: too much affordable crap and too little of what really matters. In our era of enshittification, where things get increasingly worse, it may require us to think differently whether we like it or not.