Since joining my company 2.5 years ago, I’ve been able to enjoy the Veteran’s Day holiday as an actual day off. Two of the three Veteran’s Days I’ve had off, I’ve “celebrated” by going to Costco. Holidays are good days to go to Costco, as it tends to be a little bit less crowded. And today, as I went in the mid-afternoon, I would probably say it was the least crowded visit I’ve ever had to the Spanish Harlem location. I barely had to make room for anyone in the wide aisles, and the “line” that I was in got me in and out in less than five minutes.
There’s something special and nostalgic about going to Costco that I will always enjoy, even if I am not always discovering new things to buy that I supposedly “need.” It’s always comforting to get the things I know I can rely on in bulk that I know for a fact I am saving money on (some things like the Harmless Harvest coconut water, organic chicken thighs, butter, and the spices really cannot be beat), but other things that seem pretty boring even excite me. Take the 13.5-lb bag of baking soda. Who would have thought that this multi-functioning, massive bag of cleaner/scrubber/deodorant/baking leavener would make me so happy?! We have not even opened the fourth of the four-pack of Colgate toothpaste I literally bought two years ago on Veteran’s Day, but hey, toothpaste doesn’t go bad, so that makes me happy, too!
This time for new purchases, I picked up large bags of hemp seeds, chia seeds, and three pounds of almond flour. Chris will be happy to see that I got his favorite alphonso mango nectar. And for my “treat” for myself, I picked up a 1-gram container of Spanish saffron, what I also refer to as threads of gold. Costco occasionally sells speciality items throughout the year that vary depending on location and season, and I was only lucky enough to see this there one other time. So this time, I jumped on it. Saffron makes me so, so happy. I almost indulged even more and picked up some Madagascar vanilla beans, but I decided to not to go too crazy and put it back on the shelf. At $5 per bean, it’s far, far cheaper to buy these Costco vanilla beans, but I figure that I should wait to buy them another time when I have a very specific use case in mind.
Costco – one of my all time favorite stores: you never fail me, do you?