It costs me 30.000 PGS (about 6.5 USD) each time I visit the laundry place. But for that money it is getting washed, ironed and folded. For me the hassle of not having a machine to maintain that consumes water, electricity, detergent, fabric softener, lose time doing the ironing (which is another machine to maintain, consumes quite a lot of electricity and who hasn't been hurt by the ff folding ironing board) and folding.
If there is a significant other running around the house, one quickly forgets recurring costs and the time-sink that is laundry. If you want to do it yourself, fine. If you need to do laundry in very frequent intervals, fine. But if your laundry needs are small/infrequent...why bother doing it yourself.
I calculated that if I would by a (new) machine from a decent brand and take into account the recurring costs alone, it would take me 3.5 years to break even. Besides that, I rather use the time I'm not doing laundry,ironing and folding more productively (like posting on DC
)