I have talked my wife out of us both nearly impulse-buying a mini greenhouse at Costco multiple times.

And the worst part is, I regret it. We need a greenhouse now and greenhouse prices are through the roof! I can't afford NOT to impulse buy a greenhouse at Costco 18 months ago now! I'll never make that mistake again.

> No aisle signs or labels anywhere. I understand the retail strategy here but the lack of efficiency in MY experience kills me. Clearly they can't move the bakery, or meat department. But after ~5 visits I still have no idea where some basic products can be found.

What are you having trouble finding, out of curiosity? In my Costco everything is pretty much in the same general area. They might move stuff a little bit, but it's pretty consistent.

> Who is buying a kayak, or shed while shopping for groceries?

I see this as separate trips for the larger items. Nobody is buying appliances either when you buy meat or paper towels. Also, Costco never fully replaces a full grocery store in my experience. You just don't need things in the sizes they sell them for many goods. Certain foodstuffs are really designed for restaurants and not people. Like, who is buying the 40 lb bags of flour besides people VERY into baking or restaurants?

Long ago we found that we saved more money shopping at Costco than the membership cost by a long shot. We even get the executive membership because they will refund the difference of you don’t get at least that back rewards (we always have).

For things that are acceptable, it’s usually hard to beat Costco. You have to give up variety, possibly brand choice, and maybe even buy more than you’ll use, but it works out to be significantly cheaper. There are categories, however, where Costco is never the cheapest (soft drinks) or where the commodity store brand is significantly worse than alternatives (batteries).

The "correct" way to shop at Costco is to wind through every aisle. They want you to discover what they have - what's new, what's gone, what's on sale, try some samples etc. There are some general anchors like the fridge, the alcohol, the produce section but it's otherwise pretty ephemeral.

It's not the kind of place where you go in with a shopping list, make point-to-point pickups and then checkout.

Ya I don't see the appeal either. Imo it's just a place that takes advantage of suburbanites' love of buying excessive amounts of crap they don't need while simultaneously avoiding the spaces outside their car, work, or home. All the more power to them!

I'll join on an occasional trip if I feel like it's a chicken month, but ultimately it seems like a place designed to make it as easy as possible to spend more than I normally would on large amounts of mediocre or bad food and products. It's not remotely a natural optimization of my normal buying habits.

Ironically, I do have a must buy item though, which is the plush blankets.

It makes way more sense to me to just always have a backpack and pick up a few items at a time from smaller shops or other chains, and pay to live closer to these places

My first trip to Costco was also fairly recent.

I think I've gotten the hang of it fairly well. Coffee is over by the coolers but not in them, cat little is on the back wall, specialty cheese is near the meat, Kirland cheese is near the end of one of the coolers, cheap winter jackets are somewhere in the middle between the pants and the tortilla chips, motor oil is at the far right, bread on the left near the old people, and the big expensive life-optional stuff is at the front.

Everything else is either on the way between those points, or it doesn't exist today (because even if it is there, I'll never find it).

Seems good enough for now.

> Who is buying a kayak, or shed while shopping for groceries?

Who's buying groceries while kayak shopping? The point is if you want to buy something, you can go to CostCo. The thing you want might be groceries, but sometimes people want other things.

The American mind must be studied.

I saw someone leaving buc-ees at 10:30pm who just purchased a huge fire pit and was franticly trying to jam it in the back of a large chevy. I can only imagine they went for stacks due to the poor planning

The #1 thing for me at Costco is the gas. I have the credit card, so I get 5% cash back on the first $7,000 of gas I purchase in a year. Being as that, as of now I am spending ~$70/week on fuel, I will not hit the max for the year.

But 5% cash back on ($70*52=)$3640 means I get $182/yr by default back to cover the $130 annual cost of the executive membership. Doesn't sound like a good deal until you also factor in that their fuel is typically 10 cents a gallon or more cheaper than the next least expensive fuel place, which means that for my roughly 650 gallons of fuel a year baseline costco gas saves me an additional $65.

So yeah, nothing really amazing, but the fact that having the membership lets me pocket something in the neighborhood of $120/yr on top of the occasional shopping trip and access is nice.

I hate going there. It's so crowded, the lines are massive, and all so you can save like $200 at the end of the year on some groceries. The other problem is that you end up impulse buying well over $200 worth of stuff you wouldn't have purchased if you just went to the regular grocery store. Oh but you have to go to the grocery store anyways after your 2 hour long Costco trip, because the shit they had last week is gone now. But hey at least you waited in line for another 40 minutes to save $3.00 on your tank of gas you bought while you were there.

if nobody is buying them, you have to wonder why they are for sale. my guess is someone is buying them

It's odd to me thinking people consider Costco a grocery store. I realize they have groceries but that certainly isn't what I use it for.