I avoided shopping on Amazon for 449 days. Having a baby brought me back to it, but I'm shopping smarter now.

The author found herself shopping on Amazon again after she had her third child.

Courtesy of Kate Bratskeir I challenged myself to stop shopping on Amazon a few years ago.

I went without it for 449 days, and became more thoughtful about my purchases.

With my third child, I started shopping on Amazon again.

But I still try to avoid it when possible.

I bought 72 things from Amazon in 2024.

The range of items runs the gamut: A replacement basket for the air fryer, dozens of children's books, an XL cone for my dog's post-surgery care, kids' birthday presents, skincare products I gave up on, pacifiers for my newborn twins before I remembered stashing some extras in the diaper bag, and lots of forgettable items in between.

I was feeling uncomfortable about my consumption, my carbon footprint, and how second-nature buying on Amazon had become for me.

I relied on the site to instantly cross off items on my to-do list.

The lack of friction before purchasing became an issue It felt like the site's " 1-Click checkout " feature evolved into its own kind of mechanism in my brain chemistry: I was ordering things without doing any of the logical thinking that usually happens with in-store shopping, and I knew that was all by design.

Making a purchase no longer had friction: Free shipping, a stored credit card and address, infinite stock, and a tantalizing algorithm all make shopping anywhere else feel like a chore.

When it comes to Amazon, buying begets more buying, and I was getting sick of my high level of participation in that kind of ceaseless consumer culture and of funding a company with values that don't align with my own.

I decided to stop shopping on Amazon So I challenged myself to see how long I could go without the platform, and after a month , the experiment became easier.

The rush of not buying was addictive.