6 months, no Amazon: A deranged analysis

Dare I say: Quitting Amazon can rewire your brain.

Jun 18, 2025

Six months, not an item ordered off of Amazon. 💪

Is this a worthy flex? For six months I didn’t buy a single thing from one specific website. I still shopped, still consumed, still spent money with companies and businesses that are at odds with my politics and values.

And yet, quitting Amazon for this long of a streak has recalibrated some of the deeply ingrained processes in my brain. Not shopping on Amazon has severed a mental pipeline: That hard-to-catch transition from *tiny want* to *buy now* button is now inaccessible to me. No other website in my online universe has managed to make the purchasing process as frictionless as Amazon, and I’m glad about that. All in all, going Amazon-free has been a reset for more thoughtful consumption.

I’ve been taking notes of my thoughts, feelings, experiences throughout this half-year journey. Here’s what I have to share:

1. Sometimes you just don’t buy the thing

There are so many things one can want throughout a single day. Without access to one-click purchasing, those wants are not as seamlessly granted. Things I felt an urge to buy over the past six months include (but are not limited to): A car vacuum, vital wheat gluten (lol), a wooden dish scrubber, a children’s piano, a dry brush for exfoliating, many, many other things that were too fleeting or I neglected to jot down.

What happened when I had to forgo the thing I wanted? Oftentimes, I’d forget I wanted it at all. I’d live without it. The world kept spinning. There is a trail mix of toddler crumbs filling up my car. It’s so gross, but I don’t sit in the back. Sometimes my dogs will eat it, so who needs a car vacuum anyway?

Pulling away from Amazon helped me realize that Amazon has trained me — and maybe consumer culture at large — to expect one-click shopping: You “buy now” and move on with your life. Other sites don’t have the infrastructure, which means there are more hoops to jump through to make a purchase. Forgoing one-click purchasing for six months has truly rewired some of the shopping mechanisms in my brain: I abandon virtual shopping carts way more comfortably and I impulse buy way less frequently.

2. Sometimes you forget about a thing; sometimes you ruminate over it

Forgetting about a thing you once pined for is one outcome of quitting Amazon, but it isn’t the only one. Sometimes you really want a thing, and it keeps needling its way into your consciousness like a relentless chin pimple.

Example: I ~~needed~~ wanted a specifically-sized double picture frame for gift giving on Father’s Day (such is the complication of having twins). This query is not as simple as it sounds: My search kept bringing me to Amazon for decently-priced options that I also didn’t find ugly. I couldn’t help but wonder: Was Bezos World the only place where the two criteria could exist at once?

I was determined to prove the above diagram false, and eventually found what I was looking for on eBay. (To be honest, the frames I ended up with could be classified as a little bit ugly). It took me a couple of days to make this purchase, and it felt maddening to have Amazon appear excessively in my search results while actively working to resist it.

Part of the problem here is search itself, but that’s a discussion for a different day (or never, because I don’t think I want to get into it). But all of this is to say that quitting Amazon didn’t wholly dissolve my desire to shop; sometimes it made shopping quite unenjoyable.

3. Not shopping on Amazon requires more effort

As discussed in the picture frame tale above, not shopping on Amazon is sometimes choosing to make purchasing more difficult, or, at the very least, it’s taking the long way.

I don’t think this is always a bad thing. Sure, it was ~ exasperating ~ to have to hunt down some picture frames, but, in the bigger scheme of things, the effort required to “work” for what you want can make you a more conscious consumer.

If I didn’t have a vision for my Father’s Day gift, I could have abandoned the search altogether and opted for whatever golf-themed bullshit Amazon was pimping out leading up to the holiday. But because I knew what I wanted, I stuck to my plan and shopped with intention. It’s a dull process to describe, I hear ya, but this simple exercise of intentional shopping helped me avoid the well-designed trap of adding needless shit to my cart, and helped me stay focused on the task I gave myself.

4. More friction = more thoughtfulness

I’ve written about this before — even prior to the tariff madness — but it bears repeating: Free shipping is not a right, nor is it free. Amazon’s commitment to free shipping has obliterated my own perception of what’s “reasonable” to spend money on: Like, I’m not going to buy a $12 nail clipper and pay $5 for shipping.

This mindset stopped me from buying certain things online that charged for shipping. But a shipping fee reinforces intention. Every extra fee forced me to (subconsciously) ask myself: Is this *worth* it? Do I want it enough to pay for the cost of getting it here? If the answers were “no,” then I didn’t buy the thing. Amazon has cunningly cut that thought process out of our buying brains (and maybe THAT is the cost of “free shipping”), but we all used to rely on this logic for our everyday purchases. I’m glad to have it back.

Free shipping is a brilliant (sinister?) marketing tactic that encourages shoppers to spend more money and more time on site. It has been part of Amazon’s plan for more than two decades.

“We'll be looking to see if our current customers order more from us and whether we attract a greater number of new customers,” Amazon’s Bezos wrote in an email when the company first introduced the concept of free shipping in 2002.

I never really understood what the phrase “there’s no such thing as free lunch” meant until this very moment. Maybe it’s fair to say that free shipping isn’t really free? Surely you’ve added more to your cart to reach free shipping minimums on other sites. OK, so that wasn’t really free. And Amazon’s free shipping is only afforded to Prime members who pay an annual fee or to shoppers who spend at least $35 on their purchase. Both of these things cost money.

May I be so bold to posit: Free shipping is actually just brainwashing? The seller is distorting your rational mind, using psychology against you to get you to spend. Remind yourself of this every time you’re enticed by the “deal,” and maybe you’ll think differently about the purchase you’re making.

I have a few tips for shopping less on Amazon (or not at all!) that I’m thinking of throwing together for the next installment of GLGG. Should I?

Also please leave a comment if there’s anything specific you want to know about this marvelous and noble experience.

Admissions

I have not purchased anything directly through Amazon for the past six months, but there are some gray areas I must cop to.

I bought my spouse a birthday gift through Zappos, and Zappos is owned by Amazon. I was reminded of this when the shoes arrived in an Amazon package. (Admittedly, when I had to exchange the gift TWO SEPARATE TIMES because an unnamed person does not their own shoe size, the process was as easy as it could be.) I fucked up!!@
I have a Kindle, an e-reader made by Amazon. I have not bought any books on Amazon for the past six months, but I read on my Kindle. (I use and highly recommend the Libby app.)
I asked the member of my household who still uses Amazon to buy a rubber doorstopper through the site. For this I deserve to be shot. I was ruminating over this purchase for so long and the brain energy it was consuming was verging on the side of clinical. Forgive me father Capitalism for I have sinned.
I watched Overcompensating on Prime Video. No regrets, Bowen made a cameo.

OOOKAY, I’m off to go six more months without Amazon and feel smug with every bone in my body. Take care.

Good Little Garbage Girl

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