"washing" is a euphemism for pressing a button, though
1. Sorting - when you buy clothing, do you take handling instructions into account? Accounting for handling is very hard! Good luck shopping online, hunting through instruction tags hidden on sides of clothes, all while keeping price reasonable. I do not like shopping, so I choose the first thing that looks ok and is comfortable - I am often left with unpleasant surprises when laundering. Some dryclean only, some handwash-only, some fine with washing but no dryer, some with dryer ok but tumble-dry only.
2. Do you have an in-unit washer? I do not - I traverse 7 flights of stairs to communal apartment laundry room.
3. Do you need to use quarters for the machine? If yes, this takes an extra trip to bank beforehand.
4. 7 flights of stairs again to transfer some of the clothes to a dryer, others ...
5. ... Need to be line-dried and hung, somewhere.
6. Finally, the clothes that could be normally washed must be folded and put away, not stuffed into a drawer (even simple t-shirts get wrinkled this way).
"washing" is not just pressing a button.
The thing thats terrible time sink is ironing
The fact that we dismiss this work mostly done by women by saying it's just pushing a button is probably sexism.
You buy detergent when you buy toilet paper, you throw your cloths into a hamper to not have to run around to gather them, and you hang them on a line in max 10 minutes. Ironing is something you don't need to do unless you want to buy cloths that require it.
Just because something might be done primarily by women it's not sexist to call it easy.
For us everyone is responsible to bring their clothes to the wash baskets and sort based on temperature.
Very few modern clothing require cool wash, and in my household we don't own any.
Very few white clothes and discoloration from washing whites with colors is so minimal with modern clothing/washing machines so we don't bother. The only exception is when cleaning white table cloths in order to remove stains.
Non-dryer clothes are avoided if possible.
We don't work at places which require ironed clothes.
Washing is thus for us: loading the machine (located in the apartment) with clothing from one of the two baskets when they are full, filling the detergent ball, selecting 40 or 60 depending on which basket is used, putting it in the dryer when the washer alarm goes off, taking it from the dryer when the dryer alarm goes off, and finally everyone collects their clean clothes. We could argue how common this is, and if there is a cultural difference here between US and Sweden, but I don't have any data beyond my own experience.
It takes a couple of hours a week, and usually falls to me since I work from home.
Saying some steps are "optional" requires compromises that probably a lot of people are unwilling to make; so not necessarily a meaningful way to call things optional.
Not going to comment what parents with children should do, at what ages and so on. That is just begging to get into a discussion where everyone just disagree with each other.
It's still work, isn't it? When it gets done is irrelevant.
My larger point is that your "it's not that hard" is only true in a very narrow set of circumstances that I'm skeptical exist even for you. Many problems seem simple if you constrain the variables tightly enough. But in the real world, not everyone dresses exclusively in clothes that don't wrinkle if left alone after drying, or work in jobs where looking like a hobo is acceptable. And anyone who claims that every family member including children automatically does their part in a complex series of steps without any goading at all is either deceiving themselves or trying to deceive others. The discipline is being enforced, and we don't all have the privilege of turning a blind eye while partners do it.
> work in jobs where looking like a hobo is acceptable
That is a bit offensive. Not everyone is a model and earn money depending on their appearance. There exist a quite large middle ground between hobo and model.
You're the only one who brought up models, so the dichotomy is yours.
> work in jobs where looking like a hobo is acceptable.
> or trying to deceive others.
looks like someone needs to work on their argumentation
Indeed.
I'm lazy, and as a result I select my clothing almost entirely with minimizing washing effort in mind. I tend to buy clothes that I don't need to sort out before washing, I buy most of my socks to be identical so I don't have to match them, I avoid clothes that require ironing to look even halfway presentable, and so forth.
Properly done, laziness can be an art form.
All that said, I do fold my clothes. For me, it's not that time-consuming or difficult.
I'm not complaining, 10-20 minutes per week is trivial, but it's also not just pressing a button.
Yes I do know how people used to wash clothes, and it would be a lot quicker if you missed out heating up the water on an open fire/range, and the mangling, and the hanging out of the clothes after. All features of wash day.