What a Difference Pay Laundry Makes

**Note: This is a super old post I found saved and never published. Still thought it was interesting.


Coinstar, Jewel, Roscoe Village

I have a glass Oberwies milk jar that I’ve used for years to collect spare change. When we were moving from Roscoe Village to Logan Square I cashed it in and it had $90.42 inside. There were almost no quarters because we had to pay for our laundry at our apartment in Roscoe Village.

Out of curiosity I looked up another time I cashed it out. In 2005 I wrote that the bottom half of the change didn’t have quarters in it because I had to pay for laundry when I lived in New York. Still, with quarters on the top only, I cashed in the change for $165.48. Quite a difference. Of course now we have in-unit, free laundry so the quarters are going back into the jar.

2 thoughts on “What a Difference Pay Laundry Makes

  1. We’ve had a few contests at work where people would bring in change, and we’d guess the amounts. It’s always surprising how much more seems to be there, than what people think.

    On the Coinstar thing, I’d recommend that you bring your change to a bank instead. While I’ve never used Coinstar, my sense is that they take some fee for sorting your change (whereas a bank will do it at no charge).

  2. Coinstar takes 9% off the top if you exchange it for cash, but can get a gift card for various merchants (Amazon, itunes, etc) and there is no fee.

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