Aug 17, 2026
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Elijah Hurewitz-Ravitch’s parents paid $800-plus for E&R Laundry service to wash his clothes when he went into his freshman year. He told the Washington Post that everyone who gets the service is “a little embarrassed.”
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“I know plenty of people who would not want to admit it,” he said. And there are plenty involved: E&R does the laundry for 10,000 students at 106 schools.
The aptly named Dorm Mom offers laundry support, grocery delivery, cleaning and moving services to give students a truly home-away-from-home experience: somebody else picking up and cleaning their socks.
College moving services are booming as well, as parents pay to kit out their kids’ dorm rooms. All that stuff has to be moved in and moved out, after all — even if moving in and out of college has traditionally been a family affair.
Parents are spending this money on top of their college tuition, which is steep enough. According to CollegeBoard, tuition for the 2025-2026 academic year cost an average $45,000 at a private college — compared to $11,950 for an in-state public college.
Meanwhile, federal student loans are at an all-time high: a collective $1.863 trillion, according to recent figures from the Education Data Initiative.
So why would parents drop thousands extra to outsource life skills for college-age children?
Why parents are outsourcing Life Skills 101
All the companies that specialize in these on-campus services — laundry, cleaning, meal delivery, moving — market something in common: They promise to free up students’ time.
E&R Laundry claims it can save students 80 to 100 hours a year by keeping them out of the laundry room. Maid services suggest that a clean room helps students focus on their studies.
These things certainly appeal to parents who want their children to deliver the fundamental return on investment: a college degree, ideally with the kind of top grades they’ll need to, for example, get into medical or law school.
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But there’s a more basic reason parents are spending money on these services. Young people are arriving to higher education without fundamental life skills like knowing how to clean clothes, tidy up a room or cook a meal.
Hurewitz-Ravitch told the Washington Post that one reason his parents paid for a company to wash and fold his laundry is that they didn’t know how — so they never taught him.
The American Cleaning Institute — which represents the multi-billion U.S. cleaning products industry — did a 2022 survey of college parents and their kids. The vast majority of parents (74%) and college students (72%) admitted they weren’t ready to clean their college rooms.
The survey revealed more than lack of motivation and time. A full 64% of parents were concerned their children simply didn’t know how to use cleaning products. So the institute developed Class of Clean, a how-to guide for college students covering the basics of cleaning, including Laundry 101.
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The value of an education in household chores
A growing body of research suggests that sending kids to college without knowing how to make a meal, do laundry or clean a room costs students a lot in the long term.
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The 2021 University of Vermont study Beyond Ramen: Investigating Methods to Improve Food Agency among College Students, noted that students are suffering from poor nutrition because their parents didn’t teach them cooking schools.
But the study noted that when students develop cooking skills in college, they eat more healthfully throughout their 20s. The researchers recommended actively offering cooking classes at college.
The University of San Diego recommends teaching students such life skills before they get to college, suggesting this can help them develop time management skills to last a lifetime.
Above all, letting kids cope on their own may be good for their mental health. A 2024 psychology study found that college students with helicopter parents have higher rates of depression and anxiety and don’t do as well in school.
Hurewitz-Ravitch, who described his own parents as helicopter parents, told the Washington Post he was empowered to do laundry — “a basic domestic skill that everyone should probably know” — when he moved out on his own.
“Laundry is easy,” he said.
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Laura Boast is a Senior Reporter with Moneywise.com and a lifelong content creator who has reached international audiences at Discovery, CBC, Blue Ant Media, Bond Brand Loyalty and more.
