How to shop at Costco without losing your whole afternoon
December 11, 2025
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Keep 34 IKEA blue bags in your trunk so checkout, loading, and unloading become 12 fast trips
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Make a Costco-shaped list in store order so you walk one clean loop with zero backtracking
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With two people, park the cart in low-traffic spots and send a runner for easy grab-and-go items
Costco is not just a store, its more of a lifestyle choice. If youre like most, you dont just run in real quick to Costco. You enter the maze, sample the tiny quiche, forget the paper towels along the way, and end up walking 3 extra miles.
But it doesnt actually have to eat your entire afternoon. With a tiny bit of prep (and one very famous blue bag), you can turn Costco from a time suck into a 20-minute surgical strike.
Here are four big time savers that actually work.
1. The IKEA blue bag trick
The brown boxes by the registers are somewhat handy in theory, but in real life theyre:
- Awkward to carry
- Weirdly crumbly
- Terrible for hauling stuff into your house
Enter the unsung hero of efficient Costco runs: the 99-cent giant blue IKEA bag.
How it saves you a bunch of time:
At checkout: Instead of letting the cashier stick all your stuff back in the cart, and hope they don't smashthe produce or breakthe eggs, put a couple blue IKEA bags right on the conveyor belt. That way they can quickly group your stuff by whats cold andwhats breakable, and put it all straight inyour bags.
In the parking lot: Youre not standing there trying to wedge a random banana box into your trunk. Grab the handles, swing the bag in, and youre done.
At home: One or two trip from your car to your kitchen. Maybe three if you really went for it. Youre not doing six sad little trips with armfuls of loose stuff.
Keep 3 or 4 blue bags in your trunk permanently and you'll love how quickly youmove through the checkout to pantry phase of your Costco haul.
Pro tip: Instead of having Costco employees put stuff in your blue bags, consider doing it yourself when you get back to your car. That way you can separate the bags by where stuff goes in your house. One for the pantry, one for the freezer, one for the garage, and one for the bathroom. Then when you get home, youcan take the bags right to where theygoand unload them quickly.
2. Make a Costco-Shaped shopping list (so you never double back)
The #1 way Costco steals your time is not with the long lines at checkout or the crowded parking lots. Its with the backtracking.
You get all the way to the frozen foods, then remember you need batteries. Which areon the exact opposite side of the store, past ten carts blocking the aisle and three sample stations handing out dumplings.
The fix is stupid simple:
Write your Costco list in the rough order you move through thewarehouse.
Not a random list. But rather a Costco-shaped list. You dont need a perfect map. You just need the basic zones so youll naturally throw stuff in your cart as you walk through the store with ZERO backtracking.
For example, here are the zones at my local Costco (in order of how I typically walk the store):
- Entrance / electronics
- Seasonal / clothes
- House / kitchen / tools
- Drinks / alcohol
- Produce / cold room
- Bakery / bread
- Meat / dairy / deli
- Household / pet food / toilet paper
- Frozen foods
- Coffee, snacks, cereal, pantry
- Pharmacy / health / beauty
- Checkout
When you build your list, drop each item under the right section, in order of how you typically walk around the warehouse.
Examples include:
- Milk, eggs, shredded cheese under Dairy
- Chips, granola bars, coffee under Middle aisles
- Paper towels, trash bags, detergent under Household
Im a big fan of making my Costco list the old-fashioned way and writing it on paper. But you could also use your Notes app on your phone. Just be sure to group it by zone as thats where the time-saving magic lives.
The Result: You walk the store in one clean loop and get out quickly, not like a dazed tourist who got separated from their group.
3. Divide and conquer: The 2-person power move
If youre shopping with a partner, spouse, teenager, or unsuspecting friend who made the mistake of saying Ill come with you, you have unlocked one of the biggest Costco time savers of all.
The rule: One of you drives the cart, the other person runs the missions.
Heres how you should set it up:
1. Split the list by grab and go versus comparison stuff.
Runner items: these are your obvious, fast choices (milk, eggs, bread, bananas, rotisserie chicken, case of water, paper towels).
Cart driver items: products you want to compare, choose the brand/size on, or physically inspect (think things like meat, snacks, vitamins, clothing, electronics).
2.Start together in produce or household aisle.
Once you get your bearings, the runner peels off with a mini list of go get these 6 slam dunk items.
3. Keep the cart in wide, low-traffic areas.
The cart driver parks at the end of an aisle while they grab their stuff. The runner then swoops in and drops things into the cart as they find them.
4. Meet back up and head to the checkout.
Youve basically done two laps of the store at the same time.
Instead of wandering aisle by aisle together debating every item, youre using your extra person as an actual time-saving asset, not a second opinion on stuff that doesnt matter.
4. Shop like a Costco employee: off-peak + reverse loop
Costco has two kinds of trips:
- The ones where you are trapped behind a slow-moving sample crowd in every aisle.
- And the ones where you feel like you somehow got the place to yourself.
While youcant control what your next trip will look like,you can cheat the system a little by acting like someone who works there.
Pick the right window to go
The fastest Costco runs usually happen:
- Weekdays, late morning or early afternoon.
- Weeknights after the dinner rush starts.
- The first hour after opening (if you can swing it).
If you only ever go Saturday at 11am, youre volunteering for chaos.
Do the reverse loop
Most people walk in, grab a cart, and immediately turn right because thats where the shiny TVs and clothes are.
That side of the store can get jammed with humans early and quickly.
So, give this a try instead:
- Walk straight through the front chaos and start in the back near meat, dairy, and frozen.
- Grab all your heavy and cold stuff while the rest of the store is still stuck admiring the 85-inch TVs.
- Work your way forward through all the snacks and pantry items, then finish in the seasonal aisles on your way to checkout.
Youre basically like a salmon swimming upstream in a good way. While everyone else is clogging the front and middle aisles, youre clearing the back of the store and getting out quick.
Pair that with your Costco-shaped list and youre suddenly done. Like how did that only take 20 minutes done.
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