Costco Impulse Buying, Beach Towels, and the Best Errand We Ever Ran

We went to Costco to return produce.

That was the whole plan.

Return the produce. Grab some water. Go home. Three people who, when we pulled into that parking lot, had every intention of being in and out in twenty minutes.

Then the doors opened.

Costco Impulse Buying Starts Before You Even Know It's Happening

The trouble started the way it always does. Quietly.

I wanted to show my daughter the televisions because one of the giant screens was playing footage of a boat. I thought it would be a sweet little moment. Look at the boat. Simple. Free. Nobody gets hurt.

Except right next to the televisions was a power-washing product designed for boats.

And instead of thinking we don't own a boat, so moving on, my brain went somewhere else entirely. Well...we could clean other things with it. What other things? No idea. But suddenly I was standing there fully convinced that our temporary home had been seriously under-power-washed for years. Maybe the house. Maybe the patio. Maybe things I hadn't even thought to clean yet.

There were possibilities.

My husband talked me down. We walked away without boat equipment for our nonexistent boat.

I want that on the record as personal growth.

We were maybe twelve minutes in.

The Costco Shopping Tips Nobody Warns You About

Then came the white cleaning sponges.

You know the ones. The magic erasers that make you believe every scuff, every crayon mark, every mysterious thing your toddler did to the wall can just disappear. I wanted some. Costco didn't sell some. Costco sold enough for me to open a cleaning business and staff it.

I bought them anyway.

There's a shift that happens once you're inside. At home the question is: do we really need that many? Inside Costco the question becomes: but what if we run out? Run out when? Doesn't matter. You're saving money. Probably.

Then we found the beach towels.

Three of them. Different patterns. One for me, one for my husband, one for our daughter — and each one came with its own little carrying bag. I cannot fully explain why the bag got me, but it did. Something about it made me picture a version of us that just goes to the beach. Casually. Coordinated. Together.

We bought all three.

We did not go to the beach.

We washed one towel. The other two are sitting in perfect condition waiting for a trip that hasn't happened yet. But if a beach emergency comes up, we are absolutely ready.

And I don't even feel bad about it.

Shopping With a Two-Year-Old Changes Everything

My daughter has decided that sitting quietly in a cart for an entire shopping trip is no longer something she's interested in doing.

She'll start there. For a few minutes. Then she wants down. Then she wants to climb into the big part of the cart near the paper towels. Then she wants to walk. And that's when things really get going.

My daughter doesn't walk through Costco.

She works it.

"Hi!" A few steps. "Hi!" Another aisle. "HIIII!" She doesn't know these people. That doesn't register as relevant information to her. You're here. She's here. Obviously you should say hello.

And one after another, people stopped.

People mid-debate over granola bars or paper towels suddenly looked up because this tiny girl had decided they were worth her time. They smiled. They waved. Something in their faces loosened for just a second — the way it does when a child catches you off guard with pure, uncomplicated friendliness.

I watched it happen over and over and I felt something loosen in me too.

Kids haven't learned to look away yet. They haven't learned to rush past people or check their phones or pretend they didn't make eye contact. My daughter sees a person and thinks friend — and watching her do that, aisle after aisle, I kept thinking about how long ago I stopped doing the same thing.

She also wanted seventeen items she couldn't name and had zero use for.

So. Balance.

My Husband Would Like Everyone to Know We Have Soap

Then there was the soap situation.

My husband looked at our soap supply at home and apparently saw a crisis I had completely missed. We had soap. He bought more. Not a spare bottle. Not a reasonable backup. Costco soap. Enough soap that I'm genuinely not sure what the endgame was.

If you need soap, reach out.

We have it.

There will be soap next month. Soap next year. I've stopped trying to estimate when it ends. At some point I just accepted that the soap is part of our lives now. I picture myself years from now finding the last bottle tucked in the back of a cabinet, holding it up and telling my daughter: your dad bought this on the Costco trip.

She'll know which one.

The one where we went to return produce.

The Real Costco Shopping Tip That Could Actually Save You Money

Somewhere under the sponges and towels and what I now call the Great Soap Decision, there's a real lesson worth saying out loud.

Bring a list. An actual one. Not the confident mental list where you tell everyone we only need two things — because that list has never once survived contact with a Costco.

The truth about Costco impulse buying is that nothing feels like a mistake in the moment. Twenty dollars here. Fifteen there. Something useful. Something fun. Something that only makes sense at warehouse scale. Every single thing has a reason. Then you hit the register and suddenly you're doing math you weren't expecting, thinking: wait, didn't we come here to return produce?

A good deal on something you didn't need is still money you didn't plan to spend. That's the part that's easy to forget when you're surrounded by bulk pricing and carrying bags that make you feel like a person who summers at the coast.

Get the things you love. Get the towels if they make you happy. Just maybe don't buy marine cleaning equipment for a boat that doesn't exist.

But the Best Thing We Brought Home Wasn't in the Cart

Here's what I keep coming back to.

We had fun. Nothing-special, no-occasion, walked-around-a-warehouse fun. And it was one of the best parts of my week. My husband pushing the cart. My daughter climbing in and out of it, greeting strangers like she ran the place. The towels. The soap. The boat equipment we almost bought. We laughed. We took our time. Nobody was rushing anybody anywhere.

I used to think memories came from the big days. The trips, the holidays, the occasions you plan and photograph because you already know they're supposed to matter.

Then you become a mother and something shifts.

Because the moments I hold onto most aren't the ones I planned. They're a little hand finding mine in a parking lot without thinking about it. Bedtime when she asks for one more song and I stay for three. A toddler calling out hi to a complete stranger in the paper towel aisle like it's the most natural thing in the world.

Because to her, it is.

These days look like nothing while we're in them. That's the part nobody tells you. You don't know which ordinary Tuesday is going to be the one you think about for years.

Someday she won't want to ride in the cart at all. She'll walk beside us, in her own world, and I'll probably think about this version of her — the one who believed every single person in that warehouse deserved a hello. The one who made strangers smile between the granola bars and the laundry detergent.

I'm glad we wandered. Even with the soap. Especially with the soap.

Go to Costco with a list. Stick to it, mostly. Remember that a bulk deal only saves you money if you needed the thing in the first place.

But the bigger thing — the one that's harder to put on a list — is this:

You don't need a special occasion to have a good day. Sometimes it's just the three of you, a cart full of things you didn't come for, and a two-year-old who hasn't learned yet that we're supposed to walk past people without saying hello.

Sometimes an errand is just an errand.

And sometimes, without any warning, it becomes something you'll remember.

Even Costco.

About the Author | Day 243 of 365

I'm a coach, a writer, an entrepreneur, and a mom — and apparently a person who can walk into Costco with produce to return and end up pricing out boat cleaning equipment.

For 243 days I've been writing about what a real life actually looks like. Some of it is big — motherhood, grief, healing, love, starting over, learning to trust yourself again after you forgot how. And some of it happens under fluorescent lights next to an industrial-sized display of granola bars. Both kinds matter. I've stopped pretending one is more worthy of attention than the other.

The longer I do this, the more I think the small stuff is where most of life actually lives. It's my daughter making friends with every stranger in a warehouse because nobody taught her not to yet. It's my husband's deep, unwavering commitment to ensuring this family never runs out of soap. It's three beach towels for a trip that hasn't happened and somehow feeling completely fine about that.

I know there are big adventures ahead. I really do.

But I don't want to be so busy waiting for them that I miss what's already here.

Day 243 of 365. Let's keep smiling. 🐧