I Stopped Shopping on Amazon and This Is What Happened

It took some time to recognize it, but ... I’m an Amazonaholic. I had an addiction to clicking “Buy Now” in my spare moments. For many of us, the pandemic exacerbated the tendency to go to Amazon for anything and everything to avoid leaving the house. In the beginning, this was acceptable and understandable. But I realized that what started out as a necessity had become an extravagance when we sat down as a household and took a cold, hard look at what was being bought and why. If you've grappled with the same issue, tell us in the comments.

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When the pandemic started, I jumped on the Amazon bandwagon. Panicked along with most of America, I desperately tried to click and buy everything you seemed to need to survive at home. Whether it was random snacks, cleaning products, or any kind of yard toy still available to keep the kids busy, I was turning to Amazon as a link to the outside world.

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Looking back in our purchase history from early in the pandemic, some speak so much to a state of mind: toothpaste, hand soap, batteries, and antibacterial cleaners were all somewhat reasonable buys. But then there was the overpriced sidewalk chalk and kids craft items, ice skates, and an inflatable ice rink — did we use those more than once? — a huge array of dog treats, and so, so many different types of masks. Also lounge clothing, of course!

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For as many months as I could remember, there had been something from Amazon delivered at my home most days of the week. It got to the point (and I’m sure I’m not alone here) that I would see boxes out front and have absolutely no clue what product it was that I was waiting on. A day without an Amazon box began to basically cause withdrawal symptoms. The thrill of ripping open a brown box and not quite remembering what was inside became a form of entertainment, and quite frankly a bit of a buzz.

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Around the time that Jeff Bezos stepped down from Amazon and decided to blast himself into space, my husband and I had a frank financial discussion to see just how many of our dollars were being given to the conglomerate. We recognized that we were at a point in the pandemic when it not only wasn’t crucial to buy basics on Amazon, but doing so was wasting money and taking away from potentially more deserving local businesses. We crunched the numbers and the total broke me out into a cold sweat: At year to date, we had spent around $6,000 on Amazon. It was time to reassess things, hard core.

We broke down the purchases into categories such as needs and wastes. Needs included reasonable items that made sense to buy on the site, such as relatively well-priced Amazon brand baby wipes. Wastes include random toys to keep the kids busy on a boring afternoon, clothes, or household storage items (a particular weakness of mine). We included books, as the library was now open and available for checkouts. Some items fell in between, such as dog treats (treating my pup is another weakness of mine). It turned out that unsurprisingly, the largest percentage of our purchases was indeed spent on wants over needs. A high percent of items were categorized as things we could now easily pop into the store to get, possibly for a much better price: vitamins, cleaning products, or snacks. 

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We made a family decision then and there that before we clicked on “Buy Now” again, we would search to see where else we could find it and for how much less. No more mindless online shopping. Only shopping on Amazon with a real purpose and a real need. And if at all possible, absolutely no shopping on Amazon at all.

I never knew I could have a Pavlovian response to brown boxes. But in the absence of them, you have to think twice about what it is that Amazon has become in your life. For me, it had become a pandemic crutch, something to keep busy with, a game to see what random thing could pop into your head that you could have delivered the next day. Simply, not a healthy hobby at all.

My husband and I set a weekly meeting time to see if there were items we were thinking about getting that might normally be bought from Amazon. We did some work figuring where else we could get them and found a couple of repeat-offender categories that could easily be fulfilled from retailers other than Amazon: dog items, household basics such as hand soap, and foods. We assessed if other items were needed enough to buy anywhere, such as toys and extraneous vitamins. 

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The biggest question: Were we saving money? We broke it down. The dog treats required a trip to Petco and were priced the same. The shelf-stable yogurt drinks did not need to be bought at Amazon and were in fact $3 cheaper at Target. The hand soaps were not necessarily more expensive at Amazon, but by picking them up at the local grocery store, at least we supported local business and weren’t wasting packaging.

I admit it — I fell off the wagon a couple of times those first few weeks. I impulse-bought more masks before a plane ride, only to find that they weren’t even as comfortable as some I already had. I clicked to buy gummy vitamins that I could’ve likely picked up at the drugstore for a few dollars less. I had to buy a kid birthday present, and clicked on Amazon rather than dealing with finding an actual toy store. But in general, I started to truly analyze what simply clicking and buying meant for our budget. 

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After a couple weeks I noticed a difference: I wasn’t mindlessly buying practically everything that came into my head that we seemed to need. The kids did not need some random object to amuse them the next day just because it was easy to get and was under 10 bucks. And as I was seeing from our spreadsheets, 10 bucks here and 10 bucks there adds up to way, way more. I also didn’t need that organizational item, or an extra toy for the dog just because it looks cute. I didn’t need to overnight a random household item that could wait until the next shopping trip to the store. 

I began to think harder about the environmental repercussions of all those brown boxes. Ten brown boxes that each contain one item turn a random Monday into Christmas, but even I was getting tired and feeling guilty for breaking down all those cardboard boxes over and over again.

After a month of my no-Amazon experiment, I realized that like everything else, Amazon is fine in moderation. Going forward, I will avoid grocery purchases from Amazon when possible. I will be more aware of pricing on pet items from competitors, before clicking to Amazon first just because it gets there fast. And I will definitely not be using Amazon shopping as a source of entertainment. I will take a walk or literally find anything else to do before deciding to click on something I think I need for fun.

We did a comparison download of what we spent last year at this time on Amazon versus what was spent this year during the same period. The difference was shocking. We spent one-sixth as much on Amazon by making a conscious effort not to use it unless it was absolutely the best option for something we truly needed. Will I keep avoiding Amazon as much as possible? You bet. Amazon is the ultimate in convenience, no doubt. But ultimately, making the effort to get out of the house to buy something makes you realize how much you really don’t need it.