The Best App for a Lazy Schlepper

I live in a fifth floor walk up.

When I have guests over, the first thing they say to me by the time they reach my door is never “Hello,” but always, “I can’t breathe.”

Then they collapse in a dramatic pile while asking how I walk up five flights of stairs every day.

My answer is always, “It’s easy.” Five flights are not that big a deal. I grew up on top of a giant San Francisco hill — going up a few steps is child’s play. Sometimes I meet the Seamless delivery guy halfway just to prove my own stair-loving fitness.

Perhaps this is why my friends find it utterly perplexing that if I leave a sweater at someone’s apartment on the Upper East Side, I refuse to return uptown to claim it. So long, sweater. You were cool.

Or, if I borrow a friend’s coat who lives in Chelsea, I have to lure her to my den with the promise of wine, cheese and an interpretive dance so that she handles the retrieve.

Come to think of it, I don’t like going to the post office either.

I am also admittedly violently lazy.

But luckily for me, there’s an app for all of that which I cannot bear to schlep. It’s called Shipster, and it is a godsend. It’s helped me reclaim all of my once-abandoned belongings scattered throughout the city and return that which I’ve hoarded.

It’s also great when your roommate forgets his keys and neither of you agrees to budge.

Shipster — currently based out of New York — works much in the same way Uber does. Plug in your address and a messenger arrives to pick up or drop off. Of note: the pricing is always cheaper than if I’d taken a cab to and from the errand (because haha, no subways for this paycheck-shredding sloth).

Here is where Uber differs until they invent black SUVs that can fly: Shipster will deliver your crap anywhere in the world. Immediately. Or as fast as humanly-plus-airplane-ly possible. I find that mind-boggling.

I know there’s been systems in place like this for years (UPS, FedEx, ever heard of them?) but never before have they come to my house at the press of a button and then saved my life just an hour later.

One time, a Shipster messenger completed a really important drop off for me on Halloween while dressed like robot, and he brought me candy.

You guys, that is magic.

Download it here.

Speaking of which: this week’s Writers Prompt is about dream apps. Tell us about your dream creation here.