Uprooted: I broke up with Amazon Prime, and adjusting was easy
An honest reflection one year after saying goodbye to 2-day shipping + homemaking updates
This is the “Uprooted” series, in which others and I discuss uprooting and breaking up with popular modern conveniences, and why we prefer a slower and more radical life without them.
Prologue: The homemaking update
We’ve been on a roll updating the house these past couple weeks. Our secret? A grandma came to visit. Both grandmothers have a knack for showing up and asking, “so what are your projects?” They then execute them with impressive swiftness and the same excitement as if they were renovating their own homes.
After two years of staring at unpainted wood panels at one end of the basement, in what we use as a bar/food storage area, we finally painted them to match the rest of the downstairs walls.
Do you realize how many different shades of white there are? I’m extremely late to the party of the nightmare that is color-matching white paint. But we did it. And the shade was a very prettily-named “ivory lace.” Not to be confused with “polished ivory,” which was also almost a match.
Turns out the only “before” picture I accidentally took of our basement was in the background of this photo. If you ignore all the cuteness in the foreground, you’ll notice the unpainted wall and organized chaos in the background.
We replaced the homemade cabinet that had been against the wall with a charming Facebook Marketplace find. We kept what was still usable from the original cabinet to create more storage in the garage. Then we painted the wall and reorganized!
Did you just sigh slowly in satisfaction? Or was it just me?
I finally painted all the bare areas along the stairs after taking off clumsily installed molding. We are still in the process of replacing every old and poorly painted dark maroon door in the house with updated white ones.
And for the first time in 5 and a half years of marriage, we are the proud owners of a sofa. It feels huge and hilariously luxurious. We have never owned anything bigger than a loveseat, but with kid #3 on the way, we felt five people was finally too much for a two-seater. Even if three out of five humans are under 40 pounds.
You probably remember what our living room used to look like, from my decluttering post:
The area is small enough that it had to be completely reconfigured to fit the sofa. My beautiful desk had to be moved downstairs. I miss the character it brought to our home upstairs, but keeping the rocking chair instead for the new baby is more important.
This is the setup now:
In the meantime, I’m in the process of making it as charming as possible (like the hanging greenery from the antique marketplace, according to my personal “rule of thumb” for home decor). And for my next little project, I’m on the hunt for a secondhand/vintage chair-side table for our living room.
A painted basement, painted stairs, upgraded doors, a sofa…these are the little joys I’m extremely grateful for. Even more so for a visiting mother-in-law who helps it all become a reality. And a husband who will sit and plane door after door and hand-chisel every notch for every hinge to fit each specific doorway. Because when your house is from 1970, no door frame is a standard size. And the sawdust from the chiseling and the planing? All-consuming.
Should you cancel Amazon Prime?
My search for this small piece of furniture for our living room brings me to the topic of this post: why I won’t be searching for “side tables” on Amazon. Or rather, why we canceled Amazon Prime, and how that one decision has helped us live slower, more intentionally, and more radically.
Although I tend to dislike disclaimers in writing, I’ll make a short one here. Much like getting rid of your smart phone or deleting your social media accounts, cancelling Prime isn’t a quick ticket to holiness or happiness. But it can be a small decision —the first ripple— that changes your habits in a way that cultivates holiness and happiness over time. That is what I want to explore in our story and our decision.
So should you cancel Amazon Prime? My next question would be: what would uprooting Prime make space for in your life? And whether or not you stay with the Prime giant (or whether you’re already Prime-free), I hope something in our experience will inspire one small, helpful change in your life too.
Why did we do it?
These were my top reasons why I wanted to cancel Prime:
I wanted to save the $140 a year we were spending on the membership
I was getting more and more displeased trying to navigate the hundreds of thousands of China-based brands that sold mass-produced, cheaply made products and knockoffs
I didn’t like that waiting longer than two days for shipping actually seemed “unreasonable” to me
I wanted to start shopping smaller, American-based companies that made higher quality products, even if they were more expensive
But I had my nagging reasons why we “couldn’t:”
What if we need something important within 2 days?
What if I forget a present and need to ship something quickly?
We save money not paying for shipping.
The kids watch shows on Prime Video during their screen time.
I order my einkorn flour via Amazon.
It’s more convenient to order our fertility monitor test sticks from Amazon (Marquette couple here).
Notice that these last two reasons don’t even have anything to do with Amazon Prime specifically.
And then last spring, right before my husband deployed and after reviewing our budget, I did it anyway. All aforementioned reasons be darned. I cancelled Amazon Prime.
Over one year later, and I have never for a moment regretted that decision. In fact, the transition to going “Prime-free” was so easy that I forgot I cancelled it at all. And I don’t think we’re ever going back.
Going from Prime-free to *almost* Amazon-free
Something unexpected happened in the months after cancelling Prime. I’ve placed eight non-Prime Amazon orders in the past year. But only one order in the past 9 months. Three months after cancelling Prime, I suddenly found that I had basically given up Amazon altogether. If I want a certain product, I no longer even consider searching for it there.
And —shh!— some of those non-Prime orders were still free to ship, and many still showed up within two days. But I don’t think you’re supposed to know that.
But what about my nagging reasons why we couldn’t give up Prime?
What if we need something important within 2 days? Nothing has ever been so important that I needed it from Amazon within two days. I could either drive myself to a store to get it the same or next day, find an alternate item at the store, or I reassessed how important this item actually was. Spoiler: it was never that important.
What if I forget a present and need to ship something quickly? If I needed to shop for a present, I was suddenly more intentional about what I was buying, and I discovered amazing companies I’d never have heard of otherwise. I got better at planning ahead. Or I made peace with a gift showing up after their birthday. No family member or friend has ever been offended by this.
We save money not paying for shipping. Prime benefits actually tempted me to spend more money, despite free shipping, because of the convenience of placing an order. As evidenced by this past year, after three months, I basically gave up Amazon completely, which saves a lot more money than free shipping.
The kids watch shows on Prime Video during their screen time. This is the one area where we cheat. We use my parents’ Prime subscription to watch shows on Prime Video during screen time. If they ever decide to get rid of Prime, we’ll simply find another way to stream Little Bear.
I order my einkorn flour via Amazon. I have since discovered a family-owned grocery co-op where I can buy my einkorn flour in bulk, for a lower price, along with a ton of our other grocery needs.
It’s more convenient to order our fertility monitor test sticks from Amazon. A year since publishing this post, the test sticks we need are no longer available (that I can find) in stores. They’re available on Walmart’s website —for $10 or even $20 more than Amazon. That means for now *sigh* we are purchasing them from Amazon (but even without Prime shipping, I’ve still had them show up in two days!).
None of my reasons turned out to be important enough to necessitate keeping Prime.
Changes in our family culture
But what changes after cancelling Prime actually strengthened our family culture for the better?
Researching better companies. I have found amazing companies with quality products, who share a lot of our values and run their small business to support their families. I would never have discovered many of them if I always defaulted to shopping on Amazon.
Healthier family diet. Re-sourcing my einkorn flour triggered a series of events that led us to join a wonderful grocery co-op that is the source for many affordable, organic grocery options we can’t buy locally.
Patience. I have grown in the practice of delayed gratification and patience, and I’m perfectly fine with ordering a product and waiting a week or more for it to show up at my door. I’m also okay with researching a product for a long time before choosing to purchase (or not).
Better bookish sources. I no longer order books from Amazon. Instead, I order almost every book secondhand from Thriftbooks or straight from publishers I particularly admire. These are sources I’d prefer to support with our money.
Slow decorating. I have learned the art of “slow decorating” in my home. Almost every piece of decor or furniture is something I take the intentional time to find secondhand, either on Facebook Marketplace, a local thrift store, an antique marketplace, or from a family member or friend. I have acquired such wonderful, cheaper, often higher-quality pieces that fill my home with stories and character, despite almost nothing being brand new.
Gratitude. It may sound cringe-y or cheesy, but I feel so much more grateful for purchases as “simple” as a new bed set. In that case, we researched and invested in an American company that makes organic cotton sheets and duvet sets with ethical production standards. It was more expensive, but it was so much more intentional than quickly ordering cheap polyester sets off Amazon.
Overall, we purchase less, but purchase better. And I find myself much more satisfied with where our money is going. Sure, we still shop at Walmart, Costco, and eat at fast food chains. And I love a Barnes & Noble gift card.
But we also now love our fair share of local restaurants, coffee shops, farmer’s markets, indie bookstores, thrift and antique stores, and “shopping small” and secondhand online. Our eggs come from a family in our neighborhood. Our milk is from a ranch that we personally toured with the kids, and met the cows who make the milk. Our bread comes each week from a local sourdough bakery, which is conveniently sold at the farmer’s market where we do our milk pickup.
What could your ripples be?
If this all sounds overly idealistic, I understand. But it really isn’t. It was the slow shifting of a couple habits over time, each inspired by the last positive change we made. And to think it all began with the question: is living without free, 2-day shipping really that difficult?
Cancelling Prime is not a direct ticket to local milk and eggs or organic bedsheets. Nor are those things necessary goals. But for us, these things were a result of the tiny ripples that began when we broke up with the Prime giant.
They also were the result of a heightened awareness of the responsibility we wield when we spend our money, the patience to choose delayed gratification, and the gratitude to see each material good as a gift from a God who delights in providing for His children.
What could your ripples be? I think that’s the reason so many of us decide to give up modern conveniences, in a way that goes beyond being able to brag, “I deleted my social media.” “I cancelled Amazon Prime.” The next question is always, “well, what happened? How did it change you?”
How could it change you?
The danger of creating spaces
And lastly, when we create new spaces and eradicate habits in our lives, whether it be the hole left behind after deleting Instagram, or Prime, throwing away a smart phone, or even disconnecting wi-fi, something will come to fill it.
That new space can be a dangerous place. I’ve learned it can be filled with something just as bad, something even worse, or something even better.
We got rid of Prime, and we filled that hole in our life with more intentionality with our finances, more patience, and habits that rooted us more in the immediate community and local economy around us. It also created a bit of an unhealthy habit wasting time on Facebook Marketplace. Whoops.
This topic of “creating space” could have its own post; it’s so important and applicable in our spiritual, emotional, and physical lives. But for now, I’ll simply mention it as the essential “step two” after deciding to uproot anything.
If you decide to create any new spaces in your life, have a plan to fill them with something better, and guard against new, worse influences taking root.
And I don’t mean filling spaces with more activities: trying to live slower only to become busier. Fill those spaces with better habits, more leisure, and consecrated moments for God.
At least, that’s the goal, right? A difficult one, but a worthy one.
Breaking up with Amazon Prime was a good decision for our family. And it became a stepping stone to better things. But better habits and new virtues are slowly practiced and slowly learned. They take root gradually. And our ripples are still spreading.
A few celebrations…
To anyone who prayed for the health of our baby, thank you! After spotting for six days in a row, it finally stopped and hasn’t happened since. I may never know what caused it, or whether it will happen again, but the pregnancy has felt much more peaceful now that all unexplained bleeding has ceased.
I am also celebrating Radicalis gaining its first 50 subscribers! That is so, so exciting! My next post will include a bit of a re-introduction of myself to the many new people who have gathered here in the past couple months, and I may even organize a little book giveaway to celebrate. :)
God bless, and stay radically rooted.
Isn’t slow decorating wonderful? And I mean that literally. I am full of wonder over the cozy look I’ve created with second hand and curb picked items. There’s been a lot of talk about the coming shortages in the world but we certainly aren’t going to be short of stuff--it’s everywhere!
This is going to give me something to think about…