It was about a year ago that I noticed laundromat prices rising sharply, especially the dryers. I got angry enough to find a substitute: washing my clothes by hand. It helped me get started in this new habit by visualizing a Russian babushka, with a scarf tied over her head, hauling a load of clothes down to the frozen Volga River, and then chopping a hole in the ice.
(Something is wrong with the Brave browser. I can't upload a photo. I have to run to the Edge browser.)
I got a shock the other day when I dunked my hands in the laundry bucket, early one morning. It is tempting to start laundry earlier in the day now that days are shorter, so that they have time to dry. But the water is cold! Perhaps I should put the laundry bucket inside the van overnight.
Still, it was a satisfying experience. Imagine that you have lived on restaurant food your entire life, and you suddenly got motivated to cook your own food, and that skillets and pans were a mystery to you. How satisfying learning to cook for yourself would be, despite the fact that it is routine chore most of the time!
This sounds like an advertisement for the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) approach, and I guess it is. We shouldn't let the DIY approach become a pejorative just because You Tube channels use it as a way to sell crap.
Some of the most satisfying travel/camping experiences are not exciting in a visual way or in the sense of that hackneyed term, adventure. They come from escaping the narrowness of being trapped in the Here-and-Now -- such as being a helpless consumer, dependent on the economy for all necessities -- and mentally expanding into the broad stream of the human condition as it has flowed for thousands of years.
After all, daily life is largely concerned with Necessity. Unlearning conceit and renouncing overweening aspirations seem important to living a happier life.
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So far I have used cold water. Maybe I'll try heating up the water and see how it goes.