I lived like a hermit for a week — and it revealed a scary reality about life in 2016

For five days straight, I ordered all of my food via delivery apps. I downloaded all my workout plans. I purchased everything from lightbulbs to manicures online

Thursday 04 August 2016 15:00 BST

(Business Insider)

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It's easy to live like a hermit in 2016. More than that — it's fantastic.

With the plethora of delivery apps available, there's really no reason to leave the house anymore. So I decided that for a week, I simply wouldn't leave.

For five days straight, I ordered all of my food via delivery apps. I downloaded all my workout plans. I purchased everything from lightbulbs to manicures online, to be delivered and completed in my little apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

The experience was wonderful — but also worrisome. When delivery is everywhere, why should anyone ever leave their home?

Here's what it's like to live like a hermit for a week in the age of apps.

I woke up bright and early on Monday morning, ready for my hermitage. Then I realized — I didn't have any coffee.

I had hoped I could get it delivered from Clowder, a delivery app that specializes in coffee. However, the service has not yet expanded beyond Manhattan's Financial District. From my apartment in Brooklyn, I was trapped.

Eventually, I figured out how to use my roommate's French press, using an “Oh, the Places You'll Go” mug for obvious, ironic reasons.

As I looked in the fridge for an accompanying breakfast item, it became clear that the first challenge to overcome in my hermitage was finding something to eat.

I turned to my reliable go-to grocery chain: Whole Foods.

In February, Whole Foods signed an exclusive delivery deal with Instacart. It's a good match — Whole Food's website is easy to shop for sales and best-sellers. I spent $66.90 on basics for me and my two roommates.

Online grocery shopping has a few negatives.

You can't pick your exact preference in fresh produce or make in-person replacements for things that are sold out. Whole Foods and Instacart alert you about replacements online, but I still felt a bit ripped off when my total bill ended up being $7 more expensive than my original order.

However, it also has some major positives.

I was able to publish two articles while the groceries were purchased and delivered — and I didn't have to lug a gallon of milk a half-mile home from Whole Foods.

The next basic task to be accomplished: fitness.

I wanted to work out every day, since I wasn't walking anywhere except from the fridge to the couch.

For Day 1, I decided to try Physique 57, an elite gym that offers streaming workout videos and a free trial week with the assumption that happy customers will buy a $57-a-month membership.

The main perk of Physique 57 is that you can combine short workout videos into a longer workout — all without leaving the house.

While I picked four 10-minute videos, thunder boomed and rain poured down outside my window. My phone buzzed with a flash flood warning.

Meanwhile, I was safe inside, as Chad instructed me on how to make my glutes “golden.” Physique 57's trainers had a hypnotic, slightly crazed quality intended to hold a slacker at-home audience's attention. I certainly couldn't look away from their demonic grins as I squatted and planked on command.

As I finished my workout, my apartment buzzer rang.

Earlier in the day, I had placed an order for Burmese pork belly curry from Umi Kitchen, a new startup that delivers meals home-cooked in someone else's kitchen.

Upon delivery, I found that it's clear how seriously the startup takes the motto “real good food, by real good people,” with a handwritten note from the home cook who prepared the meal. It may have simply been my day alone inside, but the note from Ai made me tear up slightly.

The curry was delicious — restaurant quality with home-cook care.

It's hard for a food-delivery service to justify a $15 curry plus a $5 delivery fee when less expensive options are available via Seamless. Additionally, there are a few questions that I still haven't been able to figure out regarding Umi Kitchen's food safety regulations.

However, the sheer culinary power of my meal mixed with the homemade heartstring-tugging appeal made Umi Kitchen a worthwhile purchase for me.

What's your biggest regret?

Day 1 totals:

Money spent: $93.89

Apps used and deliveries made: 3

Emotional state: enthusiastic hermit

On Day 2, I adopted a low-key approach to my hermitage.

My Whole Foods groceries and leftover curry carried me through the day in terms of food.

And instead of spending money on a new streaming workout plan, I turned to my favorite Pilates instructor from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who has a series of workout videos on YouTube under the name Annamated Life.

I may be biased, as I think Anna teaches the best Pilates class I have ever taken, but I enjoyed the soothing (but still intense!) workout more than the manic style of the Physique 57 class. I will say, both workouts left me very sore.

On Day 2, I also broke the cardinal rule of Hermit Week: I left the house.

I'm truly sorry — I had set up a work meeting prior to declaring this Hermit Week, and so on Tuesday evening, I did indeed leave my apartment.

While this is certainly a violation of the experiment, it did remind me of one thing: Leaving your home in New York City in the summer is terrible unless you're going to the beach or drinking outside. Sweating on a subway platform, I realized that I should have never left the safety of my own home.

Day 2 total:

Money spent: $0

Apps used and deliveries made: 1 (just YouTube)

Emotional state: regretting the choice to venture outside

I entered Day 3 with renewed enthusiasm for my hermitage and began a mission to see if I could convince a personal trainer to come to my apartment.

I could not.

My first effort was through TruBe, an app that seems like a great way to get personal trainers to your house. However, it doesn't reveal that it really only has trainers in London until you're actually trying to make your appointment.

My second attempt was through Priv, which seems to have trainers in New York as well as provide at-home massages, hair styling, and manicures. However, the app doesn't provide any details about your trainer until after you've booked. Inviting a stranger into my home seemed a bit too sketchy for me, so I decided to pass on the trainer.

Lightbulbs were easier to acquire.

After close to four months of not being able to use my bedside lamp, I found a local Lowes on Postmates and searched for both basic lightbulbs and the chandelier-style bulbs required.

While the chandelier-style bulbs required a “custom order” fill-in, both bulbs were delivered to my door within an hour. A delivery fee of $9 was pretty steep — but then again, I'd been too lazy to get the bulbs myself for months, so I have only myself to blame.

In the afternoon, I made another purchase that I would have skipped if not for my self-imposed house arrest: I Seamless-ed a smoothie.

The $6 Terrace Coffee Shop smoothie arrived icy cold, highlighting why Seamless has become a modern verb synonymous with delivery: It will deliver you the widest range of food, for the widest range of prices, reliably to your doorstep.

Basking in my afternoon smoothie, I decided I should try to order some sushi from 'old-school' (aka more than five years old) Seamless competitor Eat 24 for dinner.

Unfortunately, the Yelp-owned site did not want to allow me to order my sushi. After struggling with clumsy interface and making four attempts to order my food, which the website tried to send to a different address, I gave up.

I instead went to Sushi Yashin's website, which featured delivery from the super-simplistic BeyondMenu. It may be simple, but the meal was delivered within a half hour. I ate the sushi too quickly get a photo.

After my failed mission to find an at-home personal trainer, I turned to the next best thing: a workout crafted by Instagram legend Kayla Itsines.

Made famous in part for her followers' before-and-after Instagram shots, Itsines sells PDF guides ($52) and has a $20-per-month app membership. Both encourage users to work out wherever — no experience and minimal equipment needed.

I was skeptical of Itsines, especially when I realized her app didn't have any videos.

However, working out on my roof, I found her 28-minute workout (timed via the app) was surprisingly effective.

The workouts aren't very complex, and I preferred the routines of both Physique 57 and Annamated Life. However, the repetition makes them incredibly challenging. The app is well designed if you need structure in your workout habits — though I don't see myself paying $20 a month to join “Kayla's Army.”

Day 3:

Money: $53.99

Apps used and deliveries made: 5, plus 2 failed attempts at finding a personal trainer

Emotional state: content to be a recluse with roof access

On Day 4, I woke up eager for a certain delivery to arrive.

On Wednesday, I had ordered a Ship's Biscuit from Saltie in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, using delivery app Caviar.

Caviar sets itself apart from the pack by offering delivery from the kinds of restaurants that don't usually do delivery — places with long lines, pricey menus, and foodie fans.

I'd been meaning to try Saltie for a while, as I had heard its breakfast sandwich was one of the best in New York, but had been unwilling to wait in line for brunch. So when I saw the Ship's Biscuit while scrolling through Caviar, I decided to set up a delivery for the next morning. Many of Caviar's items aren't available for order ASAP, but most you can reserve up to a week ahead of time.

The sandwich was everything I could hope for — even if Caviar wasn't.

It takes at least 40 minutes to get to my apartment from Saltie — and the length of the journey was sadly somewhat apparent from the first bite of my sandwich.

Caviar's impressive array of restaurants made me believe the company must have some superior delivery technique to keep food fresh until it reached customers' hands. Instead, my sandwich was tasty (the focaccia alone would be worth the purchase), but somewhat lukewarm. Basically, it was Seamless with better options, plus a $15 minimum and a $2.88 service fee.

I should note that this is the part of Hermit Week when not leaving the house started going to my head a bit.

Looking for answers and hoping for an update in the Barnes & Noble versus Amazon competition, I purchased a copy of Heather Havrilesky's “How to Be a Person in the World” online.

Because of my proximity to a Brooklyn Barnes & Noble, I hoped that I would be able to buy the book using the bookstore chain's New York City same-day delivery. However, searching through the site, it wasn't clear which books were available for the speedy purchase.

Amazon was more clear. The book wasn't available via Prime Now but could be purchased for delivery on Saturday. When it came to price, Amazon beat out Barnes & Noble — $18 versus $20.85. So I clicked the button and made the purchase via Amazon.

At around 5 p.m., a package had arrived.

On Tuesday, I had ordered a meal from Chef'd, a meal-delivery service that is different from competitors like Blue Apron in that it doesn't require users to sign up for a subscription plan. Instead, you can order one meal for two or four, delivered in a big box, filled with packets of ice to keep the ingredients chilled.

In fact, the box is filled with quite a few packets of ice — it's a huge container, with directions and not too much food. My meal (an inexpensive option) cost $24, with a $10 delivery fee.

It took me a little over an hour to prepare my meal.

The instructions weren't particularly good — caramelizing onions took four times as long as instructed — but they were straightforward and got the job done. The pizza, when complete, was pretty tasty and not something I would typically make.

However, the price, effort, and enormous packaging made the entire effort feel a bit over-the-top. Purchasing one meal on Chef'd doesn't really offer much more than Googling a recipe and Instacarting groceries — a process that would be less expensive and speedier.

Post-dinner, I tried yet another streaming fitness service.

Blogilates has the benefit of being free via Youtube — a major plus. Fitness instructor Cassey Ho gives off aggressive best-friend vibes, with Dora the Explorer-style cadence as she attempts to communicate from the other side of the camera.

The variety of the short workouts (most under 10 minutes) is indisputable, with impressively constructed exercises for every part of the body. For example, I didn't know I should worry about my calves, but apparently there is a market for exercises that make them better.

Post-workout, I settle in to watch the Democratic National Convention with some wine, delivered via Minibar.

Minibar is a straightforward alcohol-delivery app — place the order, and the alcohol is delivered within the hour. Delivery was free from my wine shop of choice. I ordered two bottles of wine, and, as promised, they were at my door in 30 minutes. Simple.

Day 4 totals:

Money: $106.85

Apps used and deliveries made: 5

Emotional state: starting to talk to myself, but honestly loving it

Day 5, my final day of the hermitage, began with failure.

I ordered Black Seed Bagels (a certified Postmates partner) on the delivery service. More than an hour later, and a few minutes after my bagel was supposed to be delivered, I received a call from Postmates corporate saying there were no couriers available to deliver my meal — something I wish I would have been told an hour or so earlier.

Lunch was better, with an order from Munchery.

My biggest lesson learned about food delivery throughout the week is that no one does Seamless better than Seamless. In terms of variety, convenience, and prices, Seamless trumps the competition. To even try to compete, rivals need a hook.

Munchery's hook is supposedly nutrition, and my shrimp salad was both tasty and (I think) healthy. Still, it didn't seem much better than what I could have ordered via Seamless — and Munchery has way fewer options.

I went scientific with my workout, turning to The New York Times for suggestions.

The Times' “Scientific 7-Minute Workout” debuted in 2013 and has since spawned both an advanced edition and an app. I tried all three — using wine bottles instead of weights — and found them to be eerily similar to Kayla Itsines' app, which also uses countdown clocks for seven-minute circuits.

All in all, both Itsines' and The Times' apps capitalize on a similar idea: People in need of exercises can do anything for seven minutes, and it is possible to pack a full-body workout into a short time.

The biggest difference is that of branding — while The Times' minimalism is targeting busy people on business trips, Itsines is targeting college-aged women in need of an app that can give their workouts structure.

To celebrate my last day in captivity, I decided to treat myself with some pampering.

GlamSquad offers on-demand at-home makeup styling, hair styling, manicures, and pedicures. I needed a mani-pedi before returning to the outside world and booked the $75 service (before tax and tip) for Friday afternoon.

While my manicurist was 30 minutes late, I had absolutely no complaints about Glam Squad's effectiveness. It was nice not to worry about ruining my nails on the way home and convenient to get a salon-quality job done in my own apartment. I also was craving some company after a week of minimal face-to-face interaction and had a lovely time discussing family issues and millennial career paths with my manicurist.

I also got my first blowout, via Dry Bar's Dry on the Fly.

While getting my nails done felt well worth the $75 (plus tip), paying $75 (tip included) to get my hair curled and blow-dried in my own home didn't seem worth it.

Plus, with Dry Bar's Dry on the Fly service, customers are expected to have their hair wet and ready when the stylist arrives — meaning I was awkwardly dunking my hair in the sink as my stylist rang my apartment buzzer. Dry on the Fly may be more convenient than going to a salon, but it's also $30 more expensive and a lot less enjoyable.

I gave Postmates a second chance for dinner. This time, the service didn't disappoint.

Pro tip from a week of hermiting: If you're ordering from Postmates, you should really just click the guaranteed $2.99-and-under delivery and scroll from there. Thanks, Oaxaca Taqueria.

I waited out my final hours, sipping on another alcohol-delivery order.

With my last delivery purchase of the week, I hoped to discover a definitive alcohol-delivery champion, ordering from Minibar rival Drizly.

Instead, I found a nearly identical platform, similar prices, and indistinguishable service. If you need alcohol within an hour, either will serve you just fine.

Day 5 totals:

Money: $245.48

Apps used and deliveries made: 6

Emotional state: moody and craving human contact

Sipping my delivered can of rosé wine, I contemplated my week.

I had used a total of 20 different apps and delivery systems over the course of the week.

I also spent way more money than I would during a typical week: $500.21. Almost half of that was on beautification services, which I wouldn't typically spend money on. However, a good amount was adding a couple extra dollars for delivery — $10 to deliver Lowes, $5 extra on Umi Kitchen, $30 on a blowout at home instead of in a salon.

Perhaps the scariest thing was how easy — and generally enjoyable! — the week was.

With a little Googling, I could get pretty much anything delivered to my door within three hours, from food to lightbulbs to a makeover. Transactions were mostly seamless, and I probably could have kept on hermiting for days if I wanted.

However, the ease of hermiting hides the issues associated with it. I felt sun on my face just twice in one week. I barely walked. The only people I saw were my roommates and people I paid to bring food and services to my apartment, with all other interpersonal interaction via Slack or Tinder.

The lack of personal interaction made me value the connections I had more. Services such as Umi Kitchen, Chef'd, and GlamSquad make it clear that customers are feeling disconnected by the world of easy delivery and are willing to pay a premium for a sense of connection while still keeping an element of convenience.

Ultimately, it's not that hard to be nutritious and even active without going outside — but after a while, it doesn't feel healthy in a more general sense.

On Saturday, I left my apartment to go on a 34-mile bike ride, much of it during a serious downpour.

It was the kind of effort and bad weather that's easily avoidable by simply staying inside.

However, it highlighted what I missed during my hermitage: the element of the unexpected. The weather wasn't great, and the Museum of Modern Art's “Rockaway!” exhibit looked better on Instagram, but it was the kind of unpredictable time with friends that demonstrates the benefits of inconvenience. Sometimes less-than-seamless experiences can be a good thing.

Refusing to leave your house is easier than ever before in 2016 — maybe even too easy. After my weeklong hermitage, I predict the next wave of delivery startups will follow in Umi Kitchen's footsteps in attempting to both increase convenience while also assuaging customers' sense of disconnect that can come with the ease of isolation.

In 2016, it can be a challenge remembering what can be gained by actually going outside — plus realizing that $20 delivery minimums can add up.

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