I have decided that Amazon is a busy mom's best friend. I always used the site to purchase books, movies and the occasional gift but I have discovered a whole new appreciation for Amazon since A was born. You can buy virtually everything there! I got sucked in when I signed up for Amazon Mom, a nifty little free program which lets you try Amazon Prime for free for a set amount of time (a month, maybe?) but will add on additional time with qualifying purchases. Basically, I utilized the service plenty while I was mega pregnant and right after A was born and we ended up with a whole year for free*! (*Yes, I realize that my "freebie" was the result of me buying lots of things so it wasn't exactly free. Still, these were things I would have bought anyway.) Amazon Prime members get some pretty sweet benefits, the most important of which is free 2-day shipping on any Prime-eligible products (there are thousands) without any minimum purchase. We also have access to free movies and tv, the Kindle lending library and I can add several other friends on for them to be able to buy items with free 2-day shipping too. The catch is that this service costs $79 a year but we no longer subscribe to Netflix (approximately $96 a year), I buy fewer books and I am able to make fewer stops when running errands. The bonus is that I have also discovered that many of our household products are actually cheaper on Amazon than at my local stores.
I have had several people ask what I buy there and the extensive list, frankly, is a bit embarrassing. Here are some things that I have bought in the last 90 days: gifts (DVDs, a blanket, toys), canned dog food, organic applesauce, hair product, hemp diaper doublers, essential oils, air purifier filters, books and dog treats. How is that for a hodgepodge? And all of these things showed up on my doorstep approximately 48 hours after ordering them, which is just awesome! I will admit that I feel bad about taking business away from my local economy because I truly see the value in shopping locally. But the hassle of dragging a fussy toddler to four stores to find what I need for $2 more (plus the gas from driving around) makes me choose Amazon for this era of my life. Also, many of the items I buy on there arent available to me locally (like the canned dog food we like or the diaper doublers.) I assure myself that I will go back to buying many things locally in a few years and I hope to hold myself to doing just that.
Do you shop online? If so, have you found it to be as handy as I have? What do you like to buy from Amazon?
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