I have a feeling that more than a few of my readers either quit Amazon some time ago or never used it. but I have recently been surprised by the number of people I know who still use Amazon. I hate to tell people what to do. It always just feels wrong to me, but if you are still using Amazon for anything, it is time to stop it now. Now. The end.

In this post, I will speak to why it’s so important to cancel Amazon right now, how I did it about two years ago, and in the end, I will share some of the hidden benefits of dropping Amazon–the good things I didn’t expect when we decided 

Good Reasons to Cancel Now

I mean, we did this to ourselves, but the only thing to do is start undoing it. Amazon has been devastating for local economies for years, but its power increased exponentially during the pandemic. Right now, Jeff Bezos is worth $252 billion. And, instead of paying workers fairly or giving them reasonable breaks, just a week or so ago, Amazon laid off 16,000 workers and replaced them with AI. In the same week, Jeff Bezos laid off about one-third of the workers at The Washington Post and has taken far too much control of the editorial board. Essentially, thanks to Jeff Bezos, an important newspaper that used to hold presidents accountable now bends the knee to one.

And we have to quit funding our oppressors, in at least as much as we can.

More than that, we have to think about our local economies. We need community, and we need community businesses to thrive. It is not going to happen over night. In the two years since we quit Amazon, there have been several occasions where we couldn’t find something we needed locally. The things were simply not available, but you know what? We lived. And, if enough of us quit Amazon and started supporting local shops more, maybe more things would be available locally. It only makes sense. We used to have a lot more local options for shopping before Amazon.

Finally, let’s face it. Humans do not need to be able to purchase whatever we want when we want it. We are gatherers. It’s too easy to get addicted to the gathering. We should have to work a little harder to buy things. We should have to pause. Amazon is engineered to ensure there is no pause. If you have not seen the documentary Buy Now, I highly recommend it. We are spending our money way too quickly on things we don’t need. Amazon has us destroying our planet and keeping ourselves poor. We are doing the work for the predator class, and I think we have to stop it.

I realize there are many, many steps in this process, but dropping Amazon is a really good place to start.

And, I promise. It’s easier than you think.

How to Do It

From the time we decided to quit Amazon to the point we actually cancelled took a few weeks. I spent some time researching what I was buying at Amazon over a year. The first thing I realized was that there were quite a few things I didn’t need to buy at all, so those things were easy to let go of.

I then explored the things we needed regularly that I was getting at Amazon, and I started to research to see if I could get those things locally. If not, could I get them directly from a company website?

I am going to be honest that I could not get some of the things from local stores. I live in a more rural area, and our choices are limited. Still, I realize that the only way we are going to get more stores locally is to start supporting local businesses. And, thankfully, most things I could not find locally I was able to get directly from the companies’ websites. I found that Weck jars for canning, for example, were actually cheaper at the company site than they were on Amazon.

For books, I now use a website called Bookshop.org. It offers the same kind of convenience of Amazon in that it just has all the books, but you get to create an account and choose a local bookstore to support with your purchases from the website. A percentage of every single book you buy goes directly to your local bookstore, so if you can’t get yourself to a local bookstore or it’s kind of far away for you, Bookshop is a perfect alternative to Amazon.

I did find that some companies only have stores on Amazon, which speaks to the monopoly of Amazon. It’s so bad that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under Biden sued Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power. For the things that were not available outside of Amazon, I just had to find alternatives. One example was my son’s xl socks. He’s 6’4″ and can’t wear regular sized socks. They are too small. But the place I had been getting his socks for years had only an Amazon storefront For a bit, my son was short on socks, but I finally found another place that carried sturdy xl socks. The best part? It is a company that takes steps to support good causes. Was it time consuming? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes.

I also found great value in looking for things used. I tapped into local resources as much as possible and have been a big fan of using Facebook Marketplace, though I loathe Facebook. It’s another company I really need to cut ties with in the very near future, but if I could make myself have an account I never used other than just using the Marketplace to buy local, used items, that would be great. But there are also websites for buying used, and I am proud to say that I don’t think I have bought a single new item of clothing for myself besides shoes in the last five years. It’s especially easy to find good quality women’s clothing used.

There is certainly some work to this, but it’s necessary work. It’s hard to give up the convenience of Amazon, but it’s possible. And, I found some really important rewards to quitting Amazon–one was saving more money.

Benefits of Canceling Our Amazon Account

The first benefit of quitting Amazon was the satisfaction. I have been weary for a long time of power of the uber wealthy to control our lives in whatever way they want, so it felt really good to just be done sending my money to such a powerful and corrupt organization.

But the other benefit was that I shopped less and spent less. We have saved hundreds of dollars every year since we quit Amazon by simply buying less. This is good for our bank account and good for the planet. Amazon made shopping way too easy. Emotional purchases are a real thing that Amazon taps into beautifully. I had developed all kinds of strategies to keep myself from making emotional purchases online, from buying things I didn’t really need because they were on sale, but I found nothing worked better than simply cutting off my access.

I realize there are about a million problems we are all dealing with right now. None of us are really okay right now. One step we can take to help ourselves, our planet, and our local communities is to be more aware of how we spend our money. Right now, an easy but important step to take is to cancel your Amazon account.

photo credit: Sean Robbins, Unsplash