Mobile, Alabama: Laundry Economics

 

El Paso Laundry building, Chihuahuita, El Paso. November 2016.

In Mobile, I have access to washers and dryers that are onsite and free. I've not been blessed with this amenity since Alamogordo! 

Such luxury means a return to a weekly regimen instead of the biweekly routine of Birmingham. 

It means a year's direct cost savings of $221 and an opportunity cost savings of 65 hours in sitting-around-waiting-for-laundry-to-process time. 

Because the appliances are in the same building as my apartment, I don't even have to factor in the inconvenience of inclement weather. 

Because the appliances are in the same building as my apartment, I doubt if something dramatic like these two incidents (one on the laundry shed roof in Opelousas and the other in the laundry room a few doors down from my apartment in Alamogordo) will happen, as it requires a key to access the building. 

Lavanderia (drop-off laundry), Mexico City. November 2018.

Related posts

2020: Laundry Economics of the South (Birmingham)

2020: Laundry Economics Revisited (Tucson)

2019: Volunteer Laundress (El Paso)

2018: Mexico City: My Laundry

2013: The Economics of Laundry (Lafayette)

 

Clothes drying on line, Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. September 2011.

 

 

 

Rootless: The Economics of Turkey, the Bird

Wild turkeys, Highway 36, Kansas. July 2016.

As a rule, the winter holiday season doesn't evoke much merriment in me. Rather, it is a season to be borne in stoic resignation.

I'm not one of the folks who gets depressed around this time, luckily. 

Nope - it's the unrelenting Christmas songs, congested parking, congested stores, and shortened tempers among people who seek prime parking spaces, that make me sigh in deep martyr mode.  I am inconvenienced.

The imposition on my selfish little world doesn't cease until the end of the first week following New Year's, with that final flurry of hustle-bustle prompted by gift returns, hence long lines at the customer service counters.

Except!

Turkey goes on radical sale in advance of the feast days! Hallelujah, I sing! I can buy a big ol' turkey for a bedazzling price, throw it in the oven, pull off the meat, make soup if I want, and feed on the meat for many days.

Until this year, that is.

This year, with the purchase of my first turkey of the season, I saw that my heretofore satisfying ROI on holiday turkey purchases was over.

First: The bird spit and sputtered all over my oven walls while cooking, which meant I had to invest unanticipated time and labor into cleaning the oven.

Second: It used to be the time and labor I invested in pulling the meat off the carcass were offset by my ability to make soup from the carcass. Only .... I released my large cooking pot to the wild in my last move.

Third: Is this all the meat I got from that deceptively plump bird?

In the forseeable future, then, I'll stick to my usual plat of boneless, skinless chicken breasts that I roast en masse in my oven.
 

A bread oven outside Rustavi, Caucasus Georgia. August 2011.

Although the price for skinless, boneless chicken is about 188% higher than the holiday-turkey-on-sale, the opportunity costs of the sale-turkey exceed the financial savings by far.  Not to mention I'm paying for the turkey carcass, which I do not consume.

Bread oven (tone) and fireplace in Tbilisi, Caucasus Georgia. April 2012.

Evidently, no topic is too banal for me to write about.

Here is my article on the economics of laundry.

In a lukewarm effort to raise the level of discourse on the topic, here is a more erudite article on the economics of holiday turkey.