Just before adding our fourth baby to our family, Eric and I treated ourselves to a Costco membership. Somewhat begrudgingly, as I like to think of myself as a small business, artisanal goods kind of person—and Costco is anything but that—but you need to be practical with a big family. We go through certain foods and household goods SO quickly that it just makes sense to buy them in bulk!
Eric has celiac disease, so a lot of prepared foods are off the table for us. I also prefer to buy organic when possible and stick to whole food ingredients. Even within this space, we’ve found that we can save a lot of money by stocking up on certain staples at Costco that we’d otherwise be buying at Whole Foods or the co-op every week (at a much higher cost per unit).
What We Buy at Costco – Healthy Costco Finds
- Paper goods. Boring but necessary. We mostly buy toilet paper and tissues and occasionally paper towels (although I prefer to use rags and towels for cleaning/drying produce).
- Pull-Ups. If anyone has an eco-friendly solution for that 1-2 years when kids are daytime potty trained but still need a pull-up at night—let me know! The reusable training pants we tried with our first two were NOT effective and I got tired of changing sheets. Until then, Pull-Ups are much cheaper at Costco than Target.
- Oats. One Degree Foods sprouted gluten-free oats are incredibly inexpensive in 5-lb. bags at Costco (almost the same price as a 2-lb. bag at Whole Foods). We eat oatmeal almost every day so we go through ~3 of these bags per month!
- Purely Elizabeth granola. When we need a handy pre-made snack—say, right after having a new baby—this is a great one without any junky oils or excessive sugar.
- Organic dried fruit. They really have it ALL here. Raisins, mango, pineapple, blueberries, cranberries and dates in big quantities!
- Raw organic cashews. For some reason cashews are everyone’s nut of choice in this family, so we usually buy a big bag whenever we’re there.
- Maple syrup. Our cooking sweetener of choice, we also use it to sweeten plain yogurt and of course on pancakes or French toast! It’s ~$4 cheaper than the grocery for the same quantity of organic syrup.
- Spices. They have a limited selection of organic spices, such as HUGE containers of cinnamon (we bake a ton so this is a necessity in our house).
- Organic frozen fruit. We often use frozen fruit instead of fresh in our oatmeal in the cooler months, especially berries. Gotta have that vitamin C to ward off the school germs!
- Preschool snacks. They have a bunch of pre-packaged snacks, including more wholesome ones like unsweetened applesauce pouches, so this is a great place to shop when it’s our turn to bring snacks for the week.
- Cheese and butter. Cabot cheddar and Kerrygold butter… You would think we had a dozen kids in this house by the rate we go through cheese 😛 We also do not cook with vegetable oil(s) so we rely heavily on butter and coconut oil (and olive oil, although I try not to cook with it because of the low smoke point).
When we have time, I’ve enjoyed exploring the aisles a bit too and seeing what else I can find. My next mission is to locate our furnace air filters (thrilling, I know) which the Costco website claims are in the store.
Any other healthy Costco finds I’m missing? Drop them in the comments! I would love to know!
xx Claire
