13 Home Essentials You Should Be Buying In Bulk

While the prospect of keeping a thousand cans of tuna fish in your basement may seem a bit too eccentric and Y2K-ish for some, buying items in bulk can actually be a huge time and money saver when done properly. As long as you stick to the essentials and try to stay away from those attractive-yet-superfluous items like a 55-gallon drum of lube, you won't ever have to leave your house again.

There’s actually more to this than the concept of being able to pour yourself a killer cocktail at home without driving to the store, or even ordering from an app. When compared to purchasing at a store, you can save up to 25% on beer when ordering from bulk stores like Sam’s Club. Plus, you’ll gain the reputation as the guy who always has Bud heavy on tap. Everyone loves that guy.

I know what you’re thinking—”the minute I get my hands on all that butter, I’m going to melt it down and pour it all over my body.” Resist the urge. Through FoodServiceDirect.com, you can snag five pounds of butter for just under a hundred dollars. With the average cookie recipe requiring less than a cup of butter per batch, and four cups equating to one pound, you can realistically procure—what—9,000,000 cookies? It’s closer to 400, but you’re gonna eat it all anyway.

You know what’s even more painful than the embarrassment felt when your prospective ladypal comes across your enormous condom collection? Gonorrhea. You might not think you’ll ever be able to use 1,000 condoms in one lifetime, but when that 55-gallon drum of lube comes into play, anything—and I mean anything—is possible.

Pulling from my own personal experience after an iffy order of convenience store sushi, I know how awful it is to be stuck inside of a house without medication or ginger ale while you’re puking out your stomach lining. I suggest going for the pills over the soda as the medicinal qualities of ginger haven’t been explored yet. You may not think you need 600 tablets of Advil right now, but you will. Future you will thank you.

With Americans spending more than two billion dollars on toilet paper each year, one can deduce that TP is, indeed, a home essential. That fact makes itself pretty clear the minute you sit down on your porcelain throne and see that empty roll of cardboard in front of you. Yikes! By buying toilet paper in bulk, you can rest knowing that you’ll never have to sacrifice your copy of Rolling Stone to clean up the genocide that is the morning after taco, coffee & whiskey night.

Well, as long as you’re stocking up on toilet paper, you might as well make the best of your situation and spring for the beans. With Costco’s 540-servings pack miraculously able to survive 30 years in storage (most common brands last 12 months) beans are as versatile as they are detrimental to your colon. They truly are a magical fruit.

Laundry detergent might be the most boring thing to buy in the entire world. It’s not fun to look at and it’s ri-goddamn-diculousy expensive. However, a 1,500 oz. (almost 100 pounds) jug of detergent for $30 is a no-brainer. That’s 99 loads of laundry, which will last you a decade...pending that you do laundry, how I do laundry. Poorly.

Okay, there’s nothing sexy about toothpaste. Unless...no, never mind. There’s nothing sexy about toothpaste...or oral hygiene, for that matter. However having a few extra tubes of toothpaste on hand will seriously save you time and money—especially during those nights when you’ve exhausted those last few precious drops from your tube as you’ve just eaten the rest of the neighbor kid’s Halloween candy. As compared to the price of one tube of toothpaste, Costco’s $9.99 price tag for six tubes is insanity and worth the space it’ll take up in your precious medicine cabinet.

Let’s say the world has come to end and you’re stuck in your bomb shelter with your boring-ass family. While all hope has ended, you can live the rest of your life knowing you’ll have 270 servings of pasta at your disposal for the next twenty years. Dry pasta has an incredibly long shelf life and, let’s be honest, it’s the easiest food in the world to make.

Perhaps I was being harsh when I deemed this 55-gallon drum of lube as “superfluous.” There are so many things you can use 55 gallons of water-based lubrication for, especially when paired with this reasonably-priced above ground pool. Just don’t invite the neighbors, unless that’s the kind of big game you’re hunting...then do.

“Rice is great if you're hungry and want 2,000 of something.” Rice is a staple food in dishes all across the globe, so would it kill ya to try something new for once? If you like it, you can eat it for 25 uninterrupted years with this $54.99 bucket of emergency rice. Like many of the food items on this list, rice has a long shelf life and can be stored for a very, very long time.

No matter the type of pet you own—dog, cat, parakeet, sugar glider—you’re going to have to feed that little sucker before it keels over dead and you’ve got another case of manslaughter on your hands. There are a ton of sites where you can buy wholesale bulk pet food, Costco and Amazon are—of course—among the best.

You don’t necessarily have to be in the food industry to be up to your eyeballs in cold nuts. Companies like IFSBulk will send you over 30 pounds of almonds for $185. If, however, you’re a total wuss and can’t conceivably eat that many almonds in a short timeframe, you can spring for cheaper three-pound bag for $33. Just know we’ll be laughing at you as we plow through our metric ton of nuts.

Jeremy Glass is Supercompressor's prized lightweight staff writer whose parents actually did stock up on tuna and nuts during the Y2K scare.

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