Life after Amazon
Could Coco the cat break the back of my Amazon ban? Is there life after 'adding to basket?' Read and find out.
It should have been a relaxing Sunday morning. Teenagers still in bed, a shard of sun streaming through the window, nothing but the tuneful chirping of the birds to welcome me into the Lord’s Day of rest. But it wasn’t. Coco, the cat who owns our house but deigns to let us pay for it and live there, was not happy. She was missing her biscuits. Not just any old cat biscuits. The special hypoallergenic ones I normally buy from Amazon. But I have been on an Amazon detox – could Coco be whining on the hill I was prepared to die on?
My departure from Amazon shopping has been a process and not an event. Admittedly a process I should have started sooner, and I am a little ashamed that I didn’t. I can’t deny I had read about how shoddily its workers were treated and blushed slightly as the delivery driver made his millionth trip up the path to deliver yet another ‘essential’ roll of parcel tape. I would cringe at the thought of the carbon footprint that last minute Father’s Day mug delivery was leaving on the world –‘To the best Dad in the world, sorry I am running the planet!’
But I will admit. I was hooked. Maybe slightly addicted. Especially as a busy mum. The constant school demands had me to ‘adding to basket’ like a mad woman. Egyptian day, Roman day (same costume, different jewellery). ‘Don’t feel you have to buy anything special’ the email would say ‘Homemade is just as good.’ *Furiously adds kid’s costume to basket.
Christmas, birthdays, Valentines, Easter, mummies little amazon helper got me through them all. Not to mention the constant homeware items that I couldn’t do without. In some cases, yes, vital screws and fixes. In other cases, no. A ‘mug tree’ now consigned to the back of the garage. But times are changing and as Jeff Bezos became more and more visible, clapping like a demented seal at Felon Trump’s inauguration. I started to reassess.
I started slowly. And mindfully. With every Pavlovian urge to open the app, I would pause. ‘Do I really need this?’ If the answer was yes, I would follow up my self-integration with ‘Can I borrow one’ or ‘Can I use something else as a replacement’. If the answer was still ‘yes’ then I would bring out the big boys – ‘Can I order it elsewhere online?’ or even better ‘Can I walk to the shop for it?’.
My first victory was the rather unglamorous bags I use to dispose of Coco’s waste.