I've asked my landlord if they would let me buy back the quarters from them since it's such a pain getting them in a coin shortage. They didn't respond. Rent is already in the thousands, really my landlord should just stomach the $8 they get off me from the laundry room a month and just make it free. I'd honestly pay my landlord even higher rent if I didn't have to deal with getting rolls of quarters.

The thinking might be that when word gets out, people let their friends come do their laundry for free.

Tangential but I find it interesting that as a general rule US apartment tenants don’t have a washer/dryer eg as a front-loader combo.

I gather from research online it comes back to the practice of generally renting furnished apartments, a preference for wood building construction, a practice of having non-water-proofed wet areas, historical custom (perhaps coinciding with apartments being constructed post-war when these appliances were large and highly expensive?), and the chicken-and-egg problem of there not being a market for smaller appliances and therefore there not being great supply of smaller appliances.

I'm not sure I've ever even met someone who rented a furnished apartment.

I just think it's because it's weird to have a washing machine in your kitchen for Americans, and nobody has managed to find the right marketing tone to make this feel normal. Also, for landlords to tolerate this, put hook-ups in, or simply offer it as a feature, you'd have to start with upper-middle class people wanting one and have it trickle down. But Americans get bigger places as a sign of wealth, so they really just want normal sized machines in-unit.

In Australia too almost never is a washing machine or dryer in the kitchen. Almost all houses and apartments will have a laundry room, away from the kitchen, even if it is just a 1 square meter closet with the washer and dryer stacked in there.

Coming from the UK, where the washing machine is always in the kitchen and having a laundry room is seen as extravagant, I think this is great because washing machines are noisy and shaky and sometime leaky. Having a separate wet room with drainage for this is a good idea. It means you can wash/dry at any time too (e.g. even if you are eating in the kitchen/diner area and want some peace!)

The simple solution is minting larger value coins.