By:
Published: Aug 11, 2016 2 min read
160810_GAL_Supersize_Tuna

There's a good financial argument to be made for the wisdom of buying household staples in bulk. Assuming you have the storage space, and assuming you're saving money compared with smaller periodic purchases, it might make plenty of sense to buy, say, a case of canned soup from BJ's, or a 36-pack of toilet paper from Costco.

Then again, some of the enormous, oversized merchandise sold through these outlets is a recipe for waste for the average household. If you wind up throwing away food because there's so much your house can't consume it before it goes bad, you're not saving any money. Anything that's so huge it winds up cluttering your house for years before it's used is not worth the hassle either. Then there are the items that are so large, strange, impractical, and expensive that they can't be considered sensible any which way.

Costco and its warehouse club competitors certainly have some terrific values—those $4.99 rotisserie chickens and $1.50 hot dogs come to mind. But there is also stuff at these stores and Amazon.com that is so insanely supersized they leave us scratching our heads. Granted, it would be pretty cool to have a 400-bottle wine cellar in the house or watch "Jurassic World" on a 105-inch TV …