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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

Doing laundry is still the most time consuming task because it's done sequentially. If there's any build up at all it throw it in the wash, wait, move it to the drier, wait, unload, fold and put away.

Multiple loads means a multi hour time commitment to being on stand by to transfer and continue the process.

The programmer in me actually has resorted to throwing everything in the car and driving to a laundry mat if I have a build up for some life reason. Then I can wash and dry 12 loads concurrently and be done with it all in about 2 hours. Laundry mats are "the cloud" of home chores.

Now if somebody ever manages to automate the process of transitioning from washer, to drier, to sorted and folded in the home then they will rightly make a fortune as the time savings would be off the charts.

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Laundry is actually one chore that doesn't bother me, and I don't even have in-home machines. My laundromat is two blocks away, serves food, beer and (if I fail time management and don't finish before it begins) truly, really horribly bad comedy acts.

I load my little wheelie-cart, my laptop for some work or a book if I have time, and do what I'd normally do somewhere else for a couple hours. The only real differences are minimal interactions with humans, a need for quarters, and having to wear pants.

Folding is tedious. I hang everything except T-shirts, and some way to skip folding things simply to hang them at home would be nice, but that would involve a vehicle, which is its own bundle of urban hassle and silly for two blocks.

I've always wondered why someone didn't build a vertical washer-dryer combo, about the size of a fridge, where the clothes in the washer portion at the top simply drop into the dryer portion at the bottom (possibly assisted by a mechanical push) and start the dryer portion automatically. Bonus if you can then push the dry clothes out the side into a waiting basket, but not totally necessary. Perhaps stability is a factor with the washer being on the top, but I'm OK with bolting it to my basement floor if necessary.

Washer/dryer combos using a single tub are commercially available.

There are all-in one units using a single drum. I've never investigated but my understanding is that they're pitched primarily for more space-constrained situations. (Example: http://www.homedepot.com/b/Appliances-Washers-Dryers-All-In-...)

I'm not sure of the tradeoffs. If you have the space, doing laundry while you're in the house for other reasons and transferring manually is the least of the effort.

The problem with those units is that you can't start a new load in the washer before the previous load finishes in the dryer, because there's only one drum. So if you want to run several loads, it takes twice as long.

But you could have two of them in the same area.

If you've got space for 2 machines, you can increase energy efficiency by using the specialized machines.

You waste a lot of energy heating up and drying the drum, too, compared with a conventional dryer, where you're only drying the actual clothes.

I have one and it's awesome, Europe has smaller homes do they are much more common here I think.

I had one once, an all-in-one combo unit with the ventless dryer. The mechanism it used to dry clothes didn't work very well, and the clothes never actually got fully dry.

Mainly because engineering machines that deal with water plus electronics plus moving parts, and making the whole shebang reliable is really hard.

Yeah, and adding hot air plus a load of flammable material to the mix doesn't make things any easier. Also, I don't think the optimal load sizes for standard-sized washers and driers match up terribly well.

The biggest issue with both that and the single drum units another comment mentioned is that if there's more than one load you still have to be on stand by to put it in, so you're only saving time on the transfer of a single load.

For the single drum units, you lose the ability to wash 1 load while another is drying. The perk is that you can throw a load in when you leave for work and it will be done when you get back home. If you have more than one those, you're extending your total wash time from

wash * loads + (1 dry time)

(wash + dry time) * loads

Though, given how... interesting the reliability is on dryers and especially single-drum washer-dryers, it's probably best not to leave them on while you're out if you want your house to be there when you get back.

Yes my relatives had a house fire caused by an unattended clothes dryer, probably something to do with the exhaust (exact cause couldn't be determined). I wouldn't leave a dryer running when I'm not there.

Full size washer dryer combo units are $1500 and then you still have to pay for water electricity and detergent and have the hookups and space. $1500 goes a long way towards a laundry delivery service.

That's $20/Mo. How much is laundry service?

I have a washer and dryer in one unit, I use its quick wash-dry cycle and if I dont overload I just take it out ans fold it, haven't ironed anything in about 6 months!

laundry is the only thing i outsource and it's worth every penny, because it's shared machines and everyone knows how incredibly miserable that is when things don't go perfectly right, which is to say, all the time.

i am considering replacing my (unused, broken) dishwasher with a small combo washer dryer and continue doing dishes and cleaning by hand. i think that would be the optimal setup in terms of time and effort and money spent.

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