My Puny Pocketbook Protest Progress

by

Perspectives

Jan 29, 2025, marked the date of my last order on Amazon.com. I wrote about my decision earlier—the link to that post is at the bottom of this one This was a month before the current boycott began.

So, how much have I missed the convenience? Because I was in the habit of adding to the Amazon shopping cart items I use routinely and needed to replenish, as well as other things that are helpful to our household—or that I felt I simply MUST HAVE, the initial break did take some hard work.

Going cold turkey like this meant practicing more intentionality about shopping than my customary mode.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

One, it’s not a bad thing to routinely practice delayed gratification. Waiting is good for the soul.

Two, if I could not find what I needed in a local shop, it was astoundingly easy to go online directly to merchants for those items. For example, I wanted some lavender essential oil, which I’d routinely ordered from Amazon and had no idea where to find locally.

Instead, I went directly to the company and found what I needed for a reasonable price. No, I did not pay for shipping simply because I ordered an extra bottle for later.

Three, shopping less is delightfully freeing. It feels good.

Four, keeping a running pen/paper list of what I [think I] need helps me buy fewer items. Note: I eliminated Alexa from our house a long time ago and don’t, in the least, miss the automatically generated shopping list.

Five, I have far fewer boxes to break down and send to recycling. Even though I carefully planned my Amazon orders to be delivered in one day and, theoretically, in fewer boxes, I still received far more cardboard boxes than expected. Furthermore, much of that waste does not truly get recycled and ends up in giant waste piles somewhere around the world.

Now, as I move to shopping in physical stores, I routinely carry reusable shopping bags with me and use them wisely. It's a win-win situation.

Six, when I shop directly with merchants, they get to keep more money rather than stuff a percentage of their sales price into Jeff Bezos’ bulging pockets, so there is less for him to stuff in President Musk/Trump’s never-full-enough pocket [Note: the use of the singular “pocket” is intentional here as the two are so intertwined as to be one chimeric entity now].

Seven, and there must be a “seven” because seven is the perfect number: I made the morally correct choice. For the sake of freedom and the general good, financial resources must be spread widely, not concentrated tightly in the hands of so few.

Anyone who has studied world political/historical trends knows that immense piles of concentrated wealth in the hands of a tiny few rarely get used for the public good. Yes, there are and have been astounding benefactors among us, and Jeff Besos’s former wife, MacKenzie Scott, is a powerful example of one, but they are not the norm.

I would LOVE to be proved wrong, but it is inevitably true that the love of money is the root of all evil. Not money itself—again, there are those who handle great wealth responsibly.

However, when the gift for creating wealth turns into the necessity of making far more at any cost, i.e., the love of money instead of the love of God and others becomes the sole motivation, the line has been crossed. Evil is the inevitable result.

Now, I have kept my Amazon Prime membership because we enjoy some Prime movies and TV and no longer go to theaters. Why, you ask? Well, frankly, we both fall asleep in them. Chalk it up to old age.

Anyway, I’m not 100% cold turkey. Plus, I’m still trying to figure out how to get e-books onto my Kindle without going through Amazon. The device is too convenient for travel and for late-night/pool reading to give up.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated!

Previous post: My Puny Pocketbook Protest.

Author and columnist, the Rev. Dr. Christy Thomas is a retired clergy member of the former North Texas Annual Conference (now Horizon Texas) of the United Methodist Church. This post is republished from her blog, Pondering Life, Old Age, and a Crazy World.