The Amazon One Month Challenge begins today. The idea is to buy EVERYTHING from Amazon or one of its subsidiaries for the entire month of February. For me, this includes groceries, as I live within the AmazonFresh delivery area. There's no prize for completing this challenge (well, bragging rights and a little icon on my contact page at work), but it seemed like an interesting idea.

I already buy a lot from Amazon, including groceries. (This has allowed me to remain carless.) I'm curious to see where the holes are; where are the areas where I don't buy from Amazon and why. I have no intention of making this a long term goal. I think that competition is a healthy thing and that, frankly, there are some things I'd rather buy from other places (on and off line).

As part of the challenge, participants are encouraged to record things they can't buy from Amazon, things that they can but are costly, and also any positive surprises. There's an internal mechanism for all of this, but I thought I'd blog about it too.

So, here we go!

Day 1
The day hasn't even really started and I've hit my first snag. It's winter, my skin gets dry, and I'm running out of Origins Balanced Diet. A quick search reveals that this is not a product that is carried on Amazon.com (by Amazon itself or a 3rd party).

I have 3 options from here.
1) make what I have last as long as I can and just do without if I run out before March 1.
2) order from origins.com/walk into an Origins store anyway
3) find a substitute product

This challenge, not being formal, doesn't have a lot of rules or guidelines, and it's not entirely clear what you should do when you can't get what you want and still stay in the challenge. I think in this situation, where the specific product I want is not available but substantially similar products (similar function, price, and quality) are, that in order to stick with the spirit of the challenge, I should try an alternative product.

I mentioned previously that I already buy my groceries from Amazon. I've had "Big Radish status" (free delivery for all orders over $30) since I started using AmazonFresh as my primary grocery store last summer. Unfortunately, I wasn't quite able to make it to Big Radish in January, so I'm starting February at bit of a disadvantage. (I have to get my pre-tax order total to $75 or pay a $5.99 delivery fee, at least until I've totaled $200 for the month. Fortunately, these totals include "AmazonNow" purchases, which are a subset of Amazon.com items that are eligible for delivery with your AmazonFresh order.)