The cost difference between a moderately sized washing machine and one that's a few cubic feet larger isn't that much. Over the lifetime of the machine it pays off.
And if you have the extra capacity, you'll use it more often than you would if you had to go to the laundromat for the annual duvet cleaning.
Does this only make sense for small machines? I bought a gigantic washer/dryer and have no problem working through a large buildup that results from some disruption in life.
Borrowing from your analogy, I have large on-prem servers so I don't need the scalability of the cloud.
And if you have the extra capacity, you'll use it more often than you would if you had to go to the laundromat for the annual duvet cleaning.