I quit online shopping for 30 days

attempting to step off the hamster wheel

My wife and I just did one of the most un-American things imaginable.

No, we didn’t start measuring things in metric units. No, we didn’t use a bidet to clean our butts. What we did was much worse. Some might say, unforgivable.

Actually, that’s not totally accurate. Because we didn’t do anything. We stopped doing the one thing Americans are still best at. Shopping.

We quit shopping online for the entire month of June. Blasphemous!

I know, I know. I’m just as surprised as you are that two large men in dark suits and even darker glasses haven’t rolled up in a black SUV to revoke our citizenship and lock us away (yet).

If you don’t hear from me again, now you know why.

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So how did we get here?

This was an experiment I had been wanting to conduct for years. My wife? Not so much.

But after plenty of logical reasons begging, she finally gave in.

My initial hope was to stop having so much month left at the end of the money. That ended up being the least interesting part.

Now I must confess, I’m a major personal finance nerd. And after pouring over our expenses from the past several months to see what was going on, there was one clear culprit for our dilemma — online shopping.

I should’ve realized things had gotten out of hand when we got to know our Amazon delivery guy on a first name basis. Don’t get me wrong, Brian’s a great dude. But I shouldn’t be seeing him more than my family or friends.

Strike one.

The next painfully obvious signal should’ve been the rapid disappearance of empty space in our 837 square foot apartment. I wouldn’t call us hoarders. But it got to the point where we had to avoid opening the closets for fear that an avalanche of impulse buys would come crashing down on us.

Strike two.

Finally, and most importantly, I got smacked with the painful realization that none of our online purchases were making us any happier. For a day? Maybe. For a month? Doubtful. Ten years from now? No chance.

Strike three.

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You and I both know deep down that nothing available on Amazon, or any online retailer for that matter, will deliver one ounce of happiness in the long term.

Then why do we continue down this absurd path?

Because we’ve been brainwashed to believe that happiness is just a click away.

Mindless online shopping is our new religion. That’s exactly what our benevolent corporations wanted all along.

They perform this fantastic bait and switch. You give us your money and we’ll give you a little dopamine hit disguised as happiness.

It’s one of the biggest lies we refuse to acknowledge.

They’ve turned us into little rodents who continuously sprint on the never-ending hamster wheel of online consumption.

Just one more outfit. One more gadget. One more useless trinket. Or whatever else is sitting in your cart that you so desperately need to have.

Once that arrives, then you’ll finally be happy.

Hogwash.

If only you wanted what you already have then you’d already have everything you want.

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So how’d we do? Did we successfully resist the urge to shop online for 30 days?

Of course not.

The post-it notes strategically placed around our home with the reminder: NO ONLINE SHOPPING JUNE 2024 weren’t enough.

Because life happened.

The A/C line in our car broke. After three weeks of no air conditioning in the middle of a Texas summer, we couldn’t take it anymore. And none of the local auto parts stores had the part we needed.

So we ordered it online.

We got dangerously low on toilet paper. And we don’t allow our butts to be wiped by that toxic bleached stuff Charmin makes. We need the non-toxic, non-GMO, organic toilet paper (aka the good stuff).

So we ordered it online.

My wife ran out of one of the dozens of all natural makeup products she uses. Don’t ask me what it’s for. But based on her reaction, I knew it was an emergency.

So we ordered it online.

But that was it. Instead of having multiple packages arrive daily (which was the norm), we managed to only shop online three times over the course of this sick psychological experiment.

Progress baby.

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Sure, our checking account was healthier at the end of the month. This was to be expected.

But to my surprise, we weren’t any less happy.

Dare I say, we were a bit happier? My wife may have push back on that.

There seems to be an inverse relationship here. As the number of packages on our doorstep decreased, our happiness levels increased. Again, my wife may disagree.

To be honest, we both have dozens of items sitting in our carts begging to be ordered as I write these words.

*Ding dong*

Let me go see who that is.

“Hey Brian!”

Oh well, still a fun experiment.

Your thoughts? Criticisms? Complaints? Please leave a comment below.