Is AmazonFresh worth it in 2018? An honest review of AmazonFresh and the 3 things you should consider before signing up in 2018!
Here’s what Saturday morning used to look like at our house:
8 am: wake up, roll over, grab book from nightstand, read
10 am: start thinking about being productive
11 am: read more
12 pm: pull out a cookbook, meal plan for the week ahead
1 pm: panic because the laundry is piled high, the fridge is a wasteland, Pepper wants to go to the dog park, and we haven’t done boopkis yet
1-3 pm: feverishly grocery shop
3-10: collapse exhausted on the couch, order takeout, watch a movie, bemoan that we’re already halfway through the weekend
And those were our “leisurely” weekends at home. On weekends when we were out of town, we were those people standing in line at Trader Joe’s at 8 pm on a Monday, hangrily debating the merits of jerky and canned wine for dinner.
Everything about grocery shopping on Saturdays stressed the living heck out of me. The weekend is so short, so precious and spending 2-3 hours of a sunny, sweet Saturday assembling a list, stalking through aisles, waiting in line, and lugging it all home is the opposite of #LivingMyBestLife.
So today I’m sharing one of the best things I did this year to simplify my life. This is the true story of how I finally stopped ruining weekends with one more chore and got 3 hours back in my Saturday for lazy reading in bed.
How, you ask?
Amazon’s Fresh grocery delivery. (Oh, how I love thee.)
3 reasons why AmazonFresh is worth it in 2018:
1. The prices on 90% of things are great.
Now that Amazon Fresh stocks a lot of Whole Foods products, I can get the organic 365 black beans, spices, and other pantry staples for the same price as in store. I’ve also noticed that most of the produce is from the same local, organic farms that the Whole Foods up the street stocks, so I’m not greeted by sad, mealy tomatoes when I open up my tote.
My only slight complaint is that the meat is a bit pricier, but for us it works out, since we buy meat in bulk at Costco or through Polyface and keep our freezer meat-ed up. So, now that I can get high-quality Whole Foods groceries delivered (without the upcharges of InstaCart), Amazon Fresh is worth it in 2018.
2. You can add things to your order a few hours before delivery.
I’ve never gone to the grocery store and not forgotten something. It is my special talent in life. And nothing’s more of a downer and a time suck than running back across town for lemons. So I love that you can add things to your Fresh cart even after you’ve checked out, and up to just a few hours before the delivery. I use this feature nearly every week, since apparently, I’m completely and utterly incapable of remembering everything we need all at once.
3. You can get delivery around your schedule.
I love that there are hourly time slots every day, so I can choose whether I’m putting away groceries in the morning, at night, even at 1 am if I so fancied. (Which I do not.) And let me tell you: there’s nothing like opening your front door on a Saturday morning and finding all your groceries happily smiling up at you from their carefully packed tote. I could hug those little bags some mornings.
I agonized a bit over the price ($14.99 per month for grocery delivery is $14.99 per month less for a paperback), but after testing it out over a month, I don’t know if I’ll ever go back. I now see it as a way to treat ma’self and buy back 3 hours of my precious Saturdays.
It’s especially a huge weight off my shoulders when we’re out of town on weekends. Now I don’t have to spend the second half of our trip stressing about how on earth and when and where we’re going to buy food for the week, which makes me only slightly less of a raving lunatic.
Now, Saturday mornings at our house look like this:
8 am: wake up, roll over, grab a book from nightstand, read
10 am: still reading
11 am: still reading
12 pm: meal plan for the week ahead, drop everything into my Fresh cart, and check out
1-3 pm: take Pepper to the dog park, go for a walk, read outside, still ignore the laundry
3-bedtime: unpack our groceries that just arrived, make something simple + yummy for dinner, hang out and watch something good (current obsession: The Grand Hotel on Netflix)
So if you’re also looking for a way to simplify + outsource more in your life, give Fresh a few weeks of a test run. Right now they’re running a promo for $30 off your first order–that’s $30 of free groceries you could have this week. (I’m a bit jealous…I wish they’d been running this promo when I first signed up!)
Click here & use promo code FRESH30 for $30 off your first Amazon Fresh order.
Just promise me you’ll fill up those extra hours with lazy reading in bed, not more to-dos. 🙂
For more practical cooking tips, try:
5 quick reads for the week
- SO many cookbooks coming out this fall. Here’s a sneak peek at the best cookbooks of fall 2018.
- A birds-eye view of the first half of the year in publishing.
- I cannot put into words how excited I am about this.
- “Friendship… requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose.”
- Deals on groceries are my drug.
What we’re eating this week
It is HOT. Did you notice that? It’s all I can talk about and think about. But then once we hit that cool crisp AC in the kitchen, all the sweltering melts away and I start to feel a tug to eat something great. So, for once, we got it together this week! (And I didn’t even have to drag my lazy butt to the grocery store for all this…)
Monday: Bucket lists stress me out, except when they don’t and I finally eat someplace I’ve been dying to try: Bad Saint. So worth the hour-long wait in the heat. Thank you, bucket list.
Tuesday: We’re making lasagna for the folks here, so we’ll toss some extra meat sauce with whatever pasta I can summon from the pantry and cauliflower. I’m ready to accept my James Beard.
Wednesday: Shrimp sushi lettuce wraps which are SO GOOD when it’s boiling hot out and you just want to slap yourself silly with AC and cold food.
Thursday: Red wine braised short ribs in my Instant Pot, because somebody thought it was a good idea to release 1,000 cubic pounds of steam into my kitchen and that somebody is me.
Friday: Erik Bruner-Yang’s Everyman’s Ramen, because see above re: masochistic things to cook in the heat.
Cheers!
