Let's say a week's worth of laundry costs me $14 at the cleaners - that is about right on average. So my claim is that paying this saves me at least 2 hours of time.
So the question then is how long does it take to wash, dry and fold a week's worth of laundry? Well I live in a shared house with one washer and one dryer. So even if I get lucky and both are free when I want to do laundry, which is rare, it still takes me multiple iterations, because there is only one of each machine.
Now maybe other people have mastered the art of laundry, but whenever I try it, my clothes are never sufficiently dry after the first round of drying. So then I have to put the clothes back in the dryer and try again, moving back my whole schedule. And then maybe someone else wants a turn. And then maybe I want to go meet my friend for lunch, but I can't because my laundry is in the dryer, and somebody else is waiting. Then after the whole process is done, I have to fold the clothes. And also I've probably spent $7 worth of quarters to pay the machines.
I've lost whole half-days to my struggle with laundry. Paying $14 a week to my cleaners is the best money I've ever spent.
It seems like the most time-consuming part is the drying, so another option for you would be to keep using the washing machine and get a cloth drying rack, like this one. It takes about 10 minutes to hang the clothes, you wait till they are dry and then fold them whenever you have the time, maybe days later. Relative to the coin-operated drying machine you save both time and money, reduce energy consumption, and also have no chances of destroying your clothes with a wrong machine setting (as I have done in the past). Of course if $14 a week are insignifica...
In the xkcd comic Working, a man is seen filling up his gas tank. "Why are you going here", says the observer, "Gas is ten cents a gallon cheaper at the station five minutes that way". He responds "Because a penny saved is a penny earned". Randal's pragmatically spirited caption says "If you spend nine minutes of your time to save a dollar, you're working for less than the minimum wage."
Our opportunities to convert time into money and vice versa, though not unlimited, are numerous.
We work (sell our free time) when we…
We buy free time when we…
How can we evaluate these trades? It seems like we ought to only purchase free time when it comes cheaper than a certain figure, $x/hr, and ought to only work if we can sell our free time for more than $x/hr. Indeed, comparing trades to this time/money exchange rate is the only unexploitable way to behave.
Most of the time, when we share our estimates of the value of these trades, our comments are too vague to be helpful. If my father, a doctor tells me, a student, that "subscribing to discount mailing lists is a waste of time", what does he mean? He might mean that these mailing lists are poor value for me, he might mean the much stronger statement that they are poor value for everyone, or the much weaker statement, that they are poor value just for him (his time is obviously worth the most). I have to try to get him to disentangle his estimation from his jugement. I have to ask him "What low value would a person have to place on their time for discount mailing lists to be worthwhile?"
The easiest way for all individuals with different time/money exchange rates to share their estimates will be to quantify them. e.g. being on a discount mailing lists only saves $x per hour spent. Out of my father and I, this might represent value to none, one or both of us.
When we share these quantitative estimates, it would be silly to discuss deals that are only available privately like job offers, that are so dependent on our particular skills and qualification. Instead,we will gain the most by listing time-money trades that are likely to apply across domains, such as repairing a car on the one hand or catching a cab on the other.
By doing so, we stand to learn that many of the trades we have been carrying out have represented poor value, and we should learn of new trades that we had not previously considered. Of course, there are associated costs, like the time spent gathering this information, and the risk of becoming unduly preocuppied with these decisions, but it still seems worth doing.
A last point of order is that it will be best to indicate how far we can expect each estimate to generalise. For example, the cost of something like melatonin will differ between states or between countries, and that is worth mentioning.
So in this thread, please share your estimates in $/hr for potential ways to work or buy free time.