Why You Should Stay Home (and Shop Online) This Black Friday

Black Friday is a great time to take advantage of huge sales—and can even be the perfect opportunity to knock out all your holiday shopping in one fell swoop—but it can also be super stressful. Between the crowds and the long checkout lines, there’s a lot that can put a damper on all those deals, but you can avoid a lot of the frustration and save more time and money by shopping online.

Note: Some retailers may have different Black Friday sales online as opposed to in-store, so be sure to check beforehand if the deals you want to shop are only available in-store.

The best perk of shopping online—on Black Friday or any other day of the year—is that you can do it anywhere, and that means you can take advantage of all those great deals while you’re curled up on the couch in your pajamas with a cup of hot cocoa. No putting on real-people clothes or leaving the house required, just cozy shopping to your heart’s content.

If you’ve ever been to the mall on Black Friday, you know how crowded and overwhelming it can be. From finding a parking space to browsing through stores, the amount of people out shopping (especially when stores first open, which is usually when the biggest sales and doorbusters are) can make the experience more frustrating than anything. Shopping online on Black Friday means you don’t have to worry about any of that, so you can purchase in peace.

…unless of course, you want it to (you can hide in a room with your laptop if necessary). But if you want to spend extra time with the friends and family you’re visiting over Thanksgiving, you can get all your shopping done without leaving anyone behind by doing it all online. Plus, since many Black Friday deals seem to start earlier and earlier each year (to the point where they’re not even on Friday anymore and cut into the evening of Thanksgiving) you can still log on and score great sale items without going anywhere.

Physically going to each individual store, searching out the items you want, trying things on if you’re buying clothes, and waiting in line to check out takes up a lot of time—way more than scrolling through items, double-checking measurements, adding them to your online cart and entering your credit card information does. Unlike shopping IRL, you can easily move from store to store or even browse multiple stores at once online, which means you can take advantage of more Black Friday sales in less time, and get much more shopping done.

Another great perk of online shopping for Black Friday is that most online stores show customer reviews for their products, which can help you make the best decision when buying. This is especially helpful for home goods and electronics which are popular buys on Black Friday, and even for assessing the fit of certain clothing items and shoes. And even if the website itself doesn’t have reviews, if it’s a product that’s sold by other retailers, you can look for reviews elsewhere before you buy—much better than googling products from your phone in a crowded store.

Sure, if you shop in-store you’ll be able to take everything home with you that day which means you get to enjoy it right away, but that’s also a major down-side—you’ll have to physically take everything home with you that day. That means unloading the car, lugging everything with you up or down the stairs, and probably making multiple trips, depending on how much you buy. Since online shopping means everything gets delivered right to your door, you can make your Black Friday shopping a lot easier just by doing it virtually.

If you do decide to do some shopping today from the comfort of your sofa (or, even better — your bed!), here’s our list of sales, updated when we get new info: