The Husband and I sneaked into Costco this morning.  We didn’t want to buy anything, but it’s been years since either of us has been into a Costco, and it seemed like a fun thing to do.

Once inside, it was easy to be tempted.  Brita water filters for less than $4 apiece!  Slabs of fresh salmon for less than $6 a pound!  Laughing Cow cheeses for less than $1 apiece!  And samples at the end of ever aisle coaxing us to try General Tso’s Chicken Meal, raspberry chipoltle dip, dried mango slices, teryaki chicken bowls.  All this could be ours, we thought, for a mere $50/year membership fee.  Why, we’d easily save $50 in a year of shopping at Costco!

Plus, we were pleasantly surprised by the number of organic options.  No Whole Foods-like selection, to be sure, but good deals on diced organic canned tomatoes, organic pastas, three-packs of organic milk, local eggs, organic cheese, etc.

The problem is that I doubt very seriously if we would be able to limit ourselves to those organic options.  Most of the foods sold were processed beyond recognition.  On the whole, we don’t have a great track record of self-control when it comes to buying things, which is why we’ve been shopping at Wild Oats instead of trying to pick and choose the organic options at Safeway or Super Target.  Costco makes it all to easy to  rationalize impulse buys — in fact, it’s their business model.

So, not having a membership card or the $50 to put down for one, we managed to escape Costco without buying a single thing — though we did end up sampling quite a bit.