Who Needs Photo Albums? We've got Amazon!

A few weeks ago Tom was asking me about a motorcycle phone holder he once had that he would like to replace. Since neither one of us could remember when or where that particular item had been purchased, I offered to review Amazon. Ah, Amazon. The modern day answer to the brick and mortar stores of yesteryear. Where would our lives be without the ability to purchase literally anything we need with the touch of a yellow button? When I look back on technologies like Facebook or Amazon, I can’t believe how long we have had those conveniences. It seems like we just got them, and yet, when I went back to my Amazon history, I have been using Amazon since 2002. 2002? As in nineteen years? As I searched for that phone holder, my review of 19 years of purchases was literally a trip down memory lane for me. It was like hauling those Creative Memories photo scrapbooks out of the attic and thumbing through them. 2002 and 2003 only referenced that I had made two purchases, but didn’t show what they were. Apparently, I didn’t buy anything from Amazon in 2004, but in 2005 we must have ended our Columbia Records membership, because I bought some cds, probably for the boys, based on the artists. By 2006 I was purchasing Guitar Hero, complete with guitar for a Christmas present. From 2006 to 2008 was mostly books or videos (remember when Amazon only sold media?) and the random cold coffee filtration system. At that time I was still teaching special education and wrestling must have been the main sport for our boys because those were the books I was buying. 2008 went to 2 pages of purchase history and we went from just media, to now adding band t shirts. 2009 continued with books, books, videos, and more books and a Sirius satellite receiver. Remember when we needed those to get music? As I continued on, I could track what I was teaching, what our sons were interested in, and my husband’s hobbies. I can see Christmases, birthdays, and the addition of everything from kitchen supplies, to toiletries, to vitamins. I can even see the waste. How many of those books did not ever get read? How much of that stuff fell victim to minimalization and decluttering? These days it’s a little bit more difficult to track my life via Amazon. The app has been taken off of my phone and I need the 13 character password to log in if I want to buy anything on my laptop. And the phone holder? Never found it. I guess we bought that in a brick and mortar store. Black Friday is coming. Delete that app and shop local!