Which would you rather have delivered: groceries or laundry?

By Mayra David | February 2, 2015 - 3:59PM

We're not the first to say it: Living in New York means never having to leave your apartment—you can get pretty much whatever you want delivered to your door (unless Juno is in town). Still, those delivery services come at a premium. So we asked five New Yorkers how they'd use an unlimited budget for one service: laundry or grocery delivery?

Food shopping is no party: Grocery delivery for sure. Doing laundry is a pretty predictable chore for me. ... If you’re having a party, it [becomes] an issue how you’re going to get copious amounts of food, not to mention bottles of wine and beer, from the store. I also often have to get certain items from different stores because the grocery stores immediately in my neighborhood don’t have them. - Amber, Harlem

Loving the Laundromat (really): The laundromat is right downstairs so it’s really easy for me to do laundry. I even enjoy my early morning weekend ritual of putting the laundry in, getting breakfast from the bodega next door, and getting laundry down before the weekend has really started. But doing the grocery shopping often feels like just one more thing I have to do during the course of the week. Not to mention, I live on top of a hill, and the nearest grocery store is at the bottom of the hill. So it’s always a trek. And because I don’t like to do it, I try to get as much shopping done at once, which makes for heavy bags. - Dennis, Inwood

Hungry for take out: Food and household items take up more of the budget than laundry, so I’d like more money for grocery. But more than that, grocery shopping takes up so much time, if you think about it. Laundry is a once a week, okay, sometimes once every two weeks, affair. But I have to eat everyday. So if I’m not stopping by the grocery store, standing in line to pay, and then hauling my bags home to cook the food, then I’m ordering take out. - Matt, Ozone Park

The right ingredients: I hate doing laundry with a passion. I hate sorting through clothes to wash, and I hate folding them. So I would pay any amount of money, if I had it, to get that task off my to-do list. Grocery shopping isn’t that much fun either, but more manageable. At least I like to cook, and don’t mind looking for ingredients to make good food. It’s a more rewarding task, I think. - Jed, Upper West Side

Meals on wheels: We don’t really mind doing the grocery shopping on weekends. I’d definitely not want to do grocery shopping during the week, but that’s what we have the car for, big shopping trips for food and bulky items like toilet paper. On weekends, we do like to stock up so we don’t have to worry about food during the week. But doing the laundry is so time consuming. We have a laundry room in the building, so I really shouldn’t complain. But it does take a long time, during which you’re pretty much confined to the basement or at home for most of the time. Then there’s the waiting for machines, if it happens to be a day when a lot of people are washing clothes. When that happens, doing laundry becomes a three-hour thing that’s just unbearable. - Toni, Hamilton Heights

Results: 3-2. Grocery delivery wins!

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