In 1992, my daughter and I took off for an extended tour around Europe. We were meeting my husband in various cities when he could take the time off work to meet us. This was our first big trip and we were not experience travelers. This was also a time when airlines allowed you to take more luggage with you so we each had a lot of clothes we were hauling around with us. And it was also when we didn't have a whole lot of money so we were trying to do it as economical as possible which meant staying in very small hotels or in hostels.
            We had already been through some parts of England and France and Switzerland when my husband informed us he couldn't make the next part of the planned trip to meet us so my daughter and I changed our itinerary and headed to Rome. We found a very cheap hotel somewhere off the main tourists routes and they didn't speak a lot of English and we speak no Italian. We had come to the part of our trip where it was imperative we launder our clothes or there would have been an international incident.  
            I think we made our wishes known to our hotel that we had to find a laundromat. At that point in my life, I thought every country had coin operated laundries for those not fortunate to have their own washer and dryer. We gathered up our laundry and both of us were carrying a large towel wrapped bundle. We go out into the beautiful eternal city and walk for hours carrying those stupid bundles of laundry and trying to follow directions given that we couldn't understand and then ask passerbys for more directions we couldn't understand. We never, ever found anyplace to wash our clothes ourself or have someone do it for us. Finally we sat on the curb with our laundry beside us and realized our vacation wasn't so much fun right now. Back to the hotel and spent the day washing the clothes in the sink and stringing them out everywhere in the room until every available surface was covered with something trying to dry. I think it was impossible for the housekeeping staff to enter the room because our bed was never made up after that.
            So laundry is always a problem. On this tris my husband and I have gone the "let the hotel do it" route mostly. So far the laundry has cost us as much as $90 and that was only because we thought some of our shirts could go a bit longer. But so far the total costs are still less than tossing the clothes and buying new. I was able to do my own laundry in the Ukraine because I was staying in apartments with washers and also in Venice. In Uzbekistan, it was fairly cheap to have the hotels do it. In Australia, it's quite expensive to have the hotels do it. So yesterday, when we piled up the clothes needing to be cleaned, it was a rather large pile. We stuffed it all into bags and headed out to find the local laundromat thinking it would be a service and we could drop them and sightsee before picking up the clothes later. What a difference experience than from Rome. We had a taxi take us to the laundromat which turned out to be coin operated. So we spent a couple of hours doing our own laundry and then had to take a taxi back to the hotel to drop off the clean clothes. Ah, the years of experience and more money is certainly a nice passage of time. Clean clothes are wonderful as well. And extra nice to be able to laugh about the prior laundry episodes. I wonder if my daughter laughs about our Rome laundry dance yet. Maybe I won't check.