tuesday: breaking my amazon.com habit
I used to think amazon.com was the greatest thing. Just about any book you want, no tax and free shipping if you spent $25 or more. But over the past year, as California’s budget woes have become painfully evident, I realized I was contributing to the problem by not shopping locally WHENEVER I could. Amazon is a classic example: it offers the SAME things you can get locally (if you look) and it makes everything virtually effortless: no getting in the car, schlepping the kids, etc. Just a few mouse clicks and you’re done.
I used to think I was saving time and gas by purchasing books from Amazon instead of our local bookstores. I didn’t realize I was essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. Buying online deprives our California counties of important sources of (tax) revenue, which funds police, fire and other city services. It also does not support valuable, independent retailers like Leigh’s Favorite Books in Sunnyvale and, most importantly, enable me to interact with my community and give back to something that offers so much to me and my family.
It does require more time, sure. But browsing a bookstore is a wonderfully different experience than following Amazon’s “you may also like” suggestions. For one thing, I can go directly to my favorite sections, biographies and non-fiction, scan dozens of books at a time and PICK UP interesting titles and look through the pages. For me, nothing beats a simple, elegant book cover design. Just look at the great titles above I found this weekend. Full disclosure: these were not purchased at Leigh’s; Borders everywhere are going out of business and I could not resist up to 50% off on my wish-list items. I get a ton at the library, especially ones I only want to read once, but I have a weakness for owning books (something I’m going to work on).
Leigh can order just about any title I want (for example, I recently purchased a dozen copies of “Selma” to give as gifts) AND she does a brisk business in used books. This is a great place to shop for books and recycle ones you no longer want to keep; items not selected for resale may then be donated to local libraries (which then raise money through book sales). I’ll be going through our stacks of books this weekend to separate the keepables from the sellables or donate-ables.
Overall, I’m becoming more concious of the need to practice “full circle” consumerism. In essence, this means “where does something come from?” and then “where does it go?”. If I cannot figure out more planet-friendly ways to bring things into our home and recycle them back out, I will be saying goodbye to some old habits. More on this topic at a later date…
I keep trying to "quit" Amazon, especially after each PR fiasco they go through, but in the end it’s REALLY hard to turn down free 2-day shipping (amazon mom program) not to mention that most of their books tend to be 30-50% off the cover price. I hardly ever buy books (as much as I love ‘em we literally have no space to store more!) but when I do I tend to use Amazon (at least when I’m searching for a specific book). I adore bookshops and browsing through them, one day when I have more time for that I’ll probably buy books locally more again….
Marcy, I agree it’s hard to turn down, especially with little ones like you have! Being that mine are old enough to babysit themselves, I felt it was high time I made the change. I usually put my life goals out in public (in some fashion) to keep me committed to them. Otherwise, backsliding is a distinct possibility…!