Getting Ready for Spring With BJ's Wholesale Club

Photos by Isis Paulina Loyo Fernandez

Wholesale clubs, with their jumbo-sized packaging and mega deals, tend to elude most New Yorkers. (Forget about not having adequate pantry space to store it all; most New Yorkers don’t even have a pantry.) But now that I live a bit outside the city (and have an actual house!) I’ve been reintroduced to the joys of case-sized quantities of paper towels and giant jugs of laundry detergent.

Yes, we’ve finally been able to see how the other half lives by joining our local BJ's Wholesale Club. And while I always knew about the multi-packs of toilet paper and industrial-sized cans of peanut butter, I was honestly less familiar with their health and beauty section. But they have one! And it’s a great one, too! There are lots of brands you already use and love, and tons of good deals on haircare, skincare, and vitamins, plus health items like OTC medicines. And now, I’ve actually partnered with BJ's to take you guys along on my shopping trips over the next few months to show you what I’m scooping up in the health, wellness, and beauty aisles. 

On my most recent BJ's excursion, I picked up several things (cupcakes for my daughter’s theater group! a zillion yogurt pouches! tons o' toothpaste! a Starbucks gift card!), but the main focus for me on this trip was the oh-so-sexy topic of…allergy medicine.

Because while I am so ready for spring (I mean, we’ve had snowstorms in March this year, so I am OVER the cold), I am absolutely dreading the seasonal allergies that come with it. My husband gets them bad, and as we found out last year, my daughter does, too. Her doctor had suggested that this year, instead of waiting for the inevitable sniffles and puffy eyes to start, we give her medicine every day starting early, so that we stop the allergies before they even have a chance to creep up. And that means we need to stockpile a ton of it! (And while I don’t personally suffer from daily seasonal allergies, the pollen does really hit me hard on a few random, high-level days throughout spring, which is why I always carry emergency Benadryl tablets in my purse!)

BJ's has all the big allergy relief brands like Claritin, Benadryl, Zyrtec, Allegra, and more, plus their own exclusive line, Berkley Jensen, and they come in huge packs, so you can buy them once, at a great price, and then be covered straight through the season. I stocked up on my go-tos (Claritin and Benadryl)—and then moved on to posing around the store, taking photos in front of the cereal and body wash displays, much to the amusement of the other BJ's shoppers. (What? You guys don't do that, too?)

Are you all BJs members? If so, please tell me which items you love, so I can check them out next time I'm in the store! And if not, and you're interested in joining, use this link and you’ll get a $25 gift card to spend in the store!

Thank you to BJ's for sponsoring this post.