>10 loads at laundromat

>1. Put 10 loads in 10 washers.

>2. Move 10 loads from 10 washers to 10 dryers.

>3. Move 10 loads out of dryers and fold.

As if. More like:

1. Arrive at the laundromat and realize there are only four washers free.

2. Start three loads because the fourth one doesn't work no matter how many coins you put in.

3. Wait for a dryer when the the three loads finish. Because washers are faster there are already two people waiting for a free dryer. You realize there's no point in hurrying to do the next three loads, since your first three are only making the dryer situation worse.

4. One dryer is finished but nobody is there to unload it. What's the etiquette at this place - should you take a stranger's load out and put it in one of the dingy carts? You wonder how big the owner of those clothes is, and if he's sane.

5. Eventually you get ten loads of clothes through three washers, read an entire three year old issue of Glamour magazine upside-down to make it last, and get all but the last two loads through the dryers before deciding to dry the last two at home by draping them over your furniture.

Total run time, a little over five hours and ten sanity points.

There's probably another cloud analogy in here somewhere.

But the washing and drying time at home can be used for other things - parallel processing with asynchronous dispatch of mutually exclusive washing and drying jobs.

Laundromat: Time and hassle to bundle everything in the car, take it to the laundromat, babysit it while there (you can't go anywhere else) and bring it back home. Completed sooner, but with more overhead and focused time.

Home laundry: take it a load at a time. Completed later, but you can do anything else (even leave the house) while loads are running. No transportation overhead.

Both models have advantages, and I've done both. Mostly depends on how much hassle it is to trundle everything to the laundromat, and how soon I need the backup cleared.

You'll bottleneck at the clothes-folding stage, too