I'm middle aged and home appliances are the luxury purchase. Irons, ovens, vacuums, everything changed. But laundry didn't.

I live near the equator, so dryers are a luxury and clotheslines are the norm. We still don't buy dryers. Not even so much for the cost, but because they damage clothes in a way.

And even with Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow promoting laundromats as the key to financial independence, they're not used significantly more than they were in the past.