Originally posted by Arvid ...I was worried about the chemical's shelf times and if I would really do it often enough to justify the costs of the chemicals. This held me back for some time...
Yes, you can get developers with very long shelf lifes and learn them. HC-110 also stores a long time and you can mix it up in very small working batches. Use water for a stop bath and then you only have to stock, monitor and replace the fixer which is not too bad. That is my process.
Now if you use Rodinal and small format, you can make developing even less of a burden. Learn to do 1-hour stand development with Rodinal. It is easy, yields superb results and lets you get other things done while the film develops. The stop and fix process goes pretty fast after that. And don't worry if you space-out and develop the film for, say, 1.5 hours instead. No problem. Anyway it is a process worth exploring.