Costco is a dopamine extravaganza. You go in and there are always surprises. Christmas comes out in July.  Wine from all over the world. New  items appear and unfortunately, some items disappear.  

One day I went in and they had furniture. A whole collection of connecting sofas and couches. They felt super comfortable. I didn’t want to buy right then but got the date that they would return so I could buy it for my new house being built in cohousing.

In the meantime, I visited some neighbors (after my house was built but still missing a couch).  I noticed they had that exact same set that I was considering. So I sat on it and tested it out over the afternoon.  I assume that’s a perk of cohousing and not necessarily of other neighborhoods. You can test out furniture or other things that the neighbor has before you decide to get one or not.  In this case, I decided against it. It didn’t feel that comfortable. My neighbors had one. And, most importantly, my house is small a la cohousing where you live with a smaller house but share the common house for guests visiting.  This set would be too big in my house and took up  a lot of space in their house which was a bigger model than mine.

The opposite happens too. One neighbor puts an area rug on their front porch and swish, everyone has one!  So community can be helpful for test runs on house decor decisions.