I agree. Like, how come we aren’t able to just wash dirt off with soap and a gallon jug of water, making going through the whole process less big of a deal? As it stands you really need to either get lucky and spawn into the right conditions, or build a board, obtain soap and drive to the nearest river/swimming pool with all the filthy clothing you want cleaned because you refuse to make the same trip more than once. Perhaps make use of materials like bleach too, while we’re at it.
Either way, the morale penalties/benefits should be more significant I feel. Make the penalties higher - say, immediately after putting a dirty coat on have the highest penalty (around -25 morale?), then have it progressively fade to the current morale penalty state as time passes by, presumably to -12 or -7. Make it a unified thing too: if you’re wearing filthy clothing already you shouldn’t feel AS disgusted when you put more on, that way your -25 morale doesn’t magically double to -50 but rather drops to -37 or something. Make it a multiplier perhaps? Wearing filthy clothing reduces further penalties by 15% percent as long as it’s being worn. It’s crucial that different clothing has a morale penalty/benefit relative to its size/body part it’s worn on similarly to how things work currently; you can’t abuse the system by wearing filthy socks so that the penalty on your filthy backpack is lower, but also don’t cripple yourself when wearing filthy pants and adding filthy socks to the mix.
To contrast this, make the benefits high as well. Wearing a full set of clean clothes can boost you to +35 morale and more, and last for half a day if not longer. Perhaps balance it with more tiers of “cleanliness”, so that a shirt cleaned with a bar of soap and a bottle of water wouldn’t give you the satisfaction laundry out of a proper washing machine would. We’re assuming that the standard tier of clothing doesn’t give more boosts or penalties, and that it’s abundant. Maintaining clothing in top shape - fresh clean, that is - should be a chore, and should be done frequently - which is why the benefits are high in the first place.