As a Prepper, Amazon’s “Subscribe & Save” Has Been a Godsend for Stockpiling…

A bit of a silly post? A little pointless, too obvious thing to talk about? Maybe.

But I just wanted to share my thoughts on this because – honestly – I’ve never felt so little stress over keeping up with the parts of my prepper stockpile that I now have on Amazon Pantry, which is going to be transitioned to Subscribe & Save to my knowledge.

Wait, What Is Subscribe & Save?

I’ve heard “Amazon Pantry” itself is going to be phased out this month, but it still pretty much exists in the form of “Subscribe & Save,” or the “Recurring Purchase” button/feature, which is in a little section below the “Buy it Once” section on a lot of items that are household goods/pantry types of products on Amazon.

So it’s still around, you just no longer have to pay a subscription to access “Amazon Pantry.” Which is awesome, because it means you get to try it out without worrying about if it’s worth the money.

For those who don’t know, Amazon Pantry / Subscribe & Save is essentially an automatic delivery subscription service where you can choose Amazon items that you regularly order to be delivered to you at the frequency you want (once a month, every other months, every 3, 4, 5, or 6 months), and you will automatically get these delivered to you on roughly the same day every month.

My items come roughly on the 14th of every month, but they don’t often come together/on the same day.

I’m burying the lead here because one of the most important features (it was initially to me at least) is that you’ll also get discounts on these goods if you have subscriptions to enough products.

Right now I personally have been getting 10% off or 15% off on my subscriptions on things like supplements, cat food, litter, tissues, and a bunch of miscellaneous things, so long as I have at least 3 items being delivered to me through this feature in that particular month.

I’m guessing they will change the nitty gritty of this. Like how much the discount is and how many products you’ll have to buy to reach the upper limit of discount sweetness. So check here for the most up-to-date information on Subscribe & Save.

And if you’re sold already and don’t care, just want to start figuring out if the products you use are available and at what price, browse the products included in Subscribe & Save here.

Why I Feel Amazon’s Automatic Delivery Subscription Is So Nice to Have as a Prepper

The thing is, part of me feels like I’ve always been a prepper, at least in part, because I’m pretty neurotic and super-anxious as a baseline.

That means I worry about things, it means I stress over things going wrong before they do.

It makes me want to prepare so I don’t end up in situations that make me even more stressed – and yes usually this means I go overkill, and I can accept that this isn’t ideal in situations where I need to remain calm to be able to act wisely.

Still, it is what it is, I am what I am, and while I try to work on it, I know what I’m like.

Back in Canada, the idea of running low on something I needed was a bother to me. It was a nuisance, but I had a car. I could get what I needed, it would just be a waste of time and I would rather not have to.

When I moved to the UK, we didn’t have a car because it was far cheaper to get around without one, and walking everywhere was no problem considering the proximity of the stores and even relatives houses’ to our own home.

But running low on something I needed felt more annoying. Way more annoying. And I started doing grocery shops online to avoid going to all the stores I needed to go to. And would stock up even more on things than I needed. Fine for a prepper – but only with things that don’t expire too soon. And I stocked up on things that did expire. Which sucked. A lot of waste.

Here in Portugal, we have no car as of yet, this year most likely will be the year for it.

And the more life goes on the more going to the store and wasting hours of my life wandering isles, stressed and annoyed at the queue going so slowly when all I want to do is get my stuff out the door, is making shopping in person feel more and more pointless.

It’s also way easier to buy exactly what you don’t need rather than only what you do when you’re in person. So again, I started shopping online for a couple grocery stores (namely from Auchan and Continente; Lidl, I still have to go to in person because they don’t have an online store). It’s made life so much easier and I would not go back.

Typically, I get my stockpile supplies, like household and cleaning supplies, from the French hypermarket Auchan. They have great every day prices, they have discounts on their own brand stuff once a week. Their products are honestly very high quality for the money. No issue.

Until they stopped delivering the tissue boxes. And then the online store that I buy our 3 cats’ food and litter from took literally over a month to give me what I ordered. And I cannot count how many phone calls that took.

My anxiety skyrocketed. I am not going to a store without a car to buy litter and cat food and tissue boxes. It’s too frustrating. Too exhausting. Too much of a waste of time and effort and energy and no.

But I couldn’t trust the resources I’d been using to make sure I topped up on the supplies I needed. On the food I needed for my cats. And because I was having so much trouble with the pet deliveries being hit and miss, I was spacing out my deliveries more and more and this stressed me out because I always want a healthy stockpile.

Not good. Not good at all. So eventually I caved and went to Amazon.

I was avoiding it because it was more expensive. But at this point I was desperate to have some peace of mind, some reliability. And at least if I had 3 items on pantry I would get 10% off my orders.

Why not.

Just for the tissues. Just for the cat food. One of the 2 I feed them is exclusive to that pet store, but the other is available on Amazon. And I can try a new litter. Test a new litter. Found one that works – done. 3 products signed up for a month.

I can’t count the number of months I’ve had pantry send just these three items to me every month. It’s been close to half a year? Of course I didn’t add anything else because, again, pricing on Amazon is a little bit more than the extremely affordable pricing I can get elsewhere.

But I didn’t notice until this month, when I got my order of tissues and I didn’t even have to open the box because for once we were super duper stocked up and I didn’t even need to supply my supply closet…

I’m finally getting to the point where I am building a bigger stockpile. And it’s not stressful.

I am not having to min/max my orders. Keep track of what I bought and what I have. I don’t have to obsessively remember that I made a bulk order for cat food 3 months ago, and litter 2 months ago, so I am okay on litter but not on cat food. I don’t have to. I just keep getting it every. Single. Month.

And now I have so much extra litter on hand that I am pretty confident that I am better off than I ever was buying in bulk, but not regularly, to avoid the hassle.

And when the cat food arrives and I still have back up cat food, it makes me feel super calm.

I don’t have to worry about having bulk bought all of the items at the same time and so all-the-cat-food-expires-at-the-same-time-auaoiwejfoajfe!!!

Nope. It’s staggered. The dates are staggered because they come to me staggered.

And if I feel like I’ve just got too much? Cool. Amazon’s got a skip feature on their pantry. I just go into the back end and say to skip this month. Finding it’s too often too frequently? I can change the delivery of an item to be less frequent.

Peace. Finally. Peace.

So I may just start looking for alternate products. Things I can technically get in a supermarket but actually may be easier to add to Amazon Prime.

Things like Fairy Liquid and distilled white vinegar, which have a way longer shelf life than bleach and I could live using as the only 2 cleaning supplies if that was all I could access.

Maybe food’s not the cheapest for me to grab on Amazon in Europe right now, but if I were in the US, I would totally sign up for long-grain basmati rice every single month. We eat it super frequently and like these survival foods, it’s got an expiry date that can outlive you.

Actually I recently noticed how low we were getting on basmati, so I’ll have to bulk order some more. But if I didn’t notice, like I didn’t notice with the Jasmine rice that we eat far less frequently, I could’ve gotten to the point where I was down to my last bag – or totally out – before I noticed I needed to top up. Not a good position to be in if an emergency started up before I noticed.

So staples, as much as possible, if I can and it’s not going to cost me an arm and a leg, I think I will switch over to Amazon Pantry.

It’s taken the guesswork out of stockpiling because I only buy one of something to make sure I like it, then add it to a monthly or bi monthly schedule depending on how much I need + how much extra I want for a stockpile.

I reduce deliveries to be more infrequent once my stockpile has caught up, and it helps me be able to calculate much more accurately how much my little household needs of any particular thing.

I don’t know how to explain just how nice it’s been to not be forced to burst buy and stock up all at once. To have a steady trickle of things I need come in without me expending brain power in keeping track.

It’s pretty freeing, and I somehow didn’t expect it to be so stinkin’ nice. But it makes sense now that I think it through.

Your Thoughts on Amazon Recurring Subscriptions for Prepper Stockpiles?

Have you ever tried out anything like this before? I was really hesitant to, if I’m honest. So I’m kind of glad that circumstance pushed me into just trying it out, and there’s been no turning back since.

Would you ever give it a shot? Would anything hold you back from doing this besides price? (That’s the only thing that would hold me back, honestly).

Have you checked out the Subscribe & Save section and what products are offered? How do you feel the pricing is in comparison to other places you get these products? I’m so curious to know because I feel it’s totally different depending on which items you get and where you live.

Really looking forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments down below!