13 Costco Home Improvement Products You Didn't Realize Existed

Costco is a members only warehouse store where you can buy just about anything, often at a discount. The company opened its first store in Seattle, Washington in 1983, and today Costco operates more than 900 stores in North America and around the world.

A Costco membership gives members access to food, clothing, furniture, electronics, solar panels, tires, discounted gasoline (at some locations) and a lot more. In addition to bulk groceries and affordable hot dog lunches, the store has a significant selection of home improvement tools, materials, and accessories. Among the wide selection of home improvement products available at Costco, you can find common, everyday tools and materials like hammers and screwdriver sets, alongside less conventional products.

We combed through Costco's many home improvement offerings to find the hidden goodies you might not know about. While SlashGear can't vouch for the quality of any particular product and doesn't necessarily recommend purchasing any of them, we wanted you to know that they exist.

The bathroom can easily become the most humid room in your home. Running hot water for a bath or shower can fill the room with water vapor until it condenses on the mirror and every other surface. If you keep your washer and dryer in your bathroom, that can make the moisture situation even worse. If you live in a dry, desert environment then a little extra humidity might be a welcome addition, but in other environments humidity control can be important for preventing mold and mildew.

This ceiling fan and light from Broan connects to your existing duct system to remove moisture. It has a built-in LED light and humidity sensing capabilities. After installation, you can set your desired humidity target and the fan will automatically turn on when humidity gets too high, then turn off again when the humidity drops. It takes the guesswork out of keeping your bathroom, and the rest of your home, free of mold and mildew.

The oldest known mirrors were black, made of polished obsidian. Later, mirrors were made of polished metal and, eventually, glass. Of course, glass is famously transparent and you need to add something to transform it into a mirror. That something is usually a thin coating of metal, like silver or aluminum. Mirrors have gone through several evolutions over the last few thousand years and they are still evolving today.

The Kaila Front Lit LED Mirror from Paris MIrror is an example of how modern mirrors are still trying to push the boundaries of self reflection. It comes in four different sizes, with the smallest measuring 24 inches by 32 inches, and the largest measuring 60 inches by 32 inches.

Whatever the size, the mirror is surrounded by LED lights which you can change the color of and dim on demand. Perhaps its best feature is a built-in defogger you can trigger with the press of a button, to keep the mirror clear even after a hot shower.

Water leaks can cause serious problems, especially if they happen when you're not home. Free flowing water can easily damage your home and possessions, requiring expensive repairs. The Moen Flo Smart Water Monitor installs directly into your existing water line, connects to a smartphone app, and lets you know when a leak has been detected.

The kit fits ¾-inch and 1-inch pipes and comes with two Smart Leak Detectors. The system automatically shuts down your water supply when a leak is detected and sends an alert to your phone. The Moen Smart Water app lets control your water supply remotely and lets you monitor your water usage, flow rate, water pressure, and more. The system needs access to your home Wi-Fi connection and an AC power outlet, adding it to the Internet of Things. You can even connect the water monitor to Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and other popular smart home platforms. Check out our list of other smart home gadgets you might not know about.

Whether you're getting ready in the morning or winding down at night, a warm shower can be one of the most comforting moments of your day. And stepping out of the shower into a comparatively cold environment can be one of the least comforting. A warm towel can help ease the transition.

The Homedics XL Towel Warmer can accommodate up to three oversized towels, rolled up and stood side by side. You can also use the warmer to heat up robes or blankets. Once you've filled it with chosen towels, the press of a button starts the warming process. Warming continues for 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes before automatically shutting off. A red indicator light lets you know when your towels are warm and ready, and that light stays on until the unit has cooled down.

The warmer comes with aroma pads so your towels come out smelling nice, in addition to being warm, and when you're finished the whole thing collapses down for easier storage.

We ask a lot of our garages. They can be home workshops, and storage spaces for your tools and projects. They often serve as additional storage for things you don't want in the home, but still want to have close to hand. And they serve as a place to keep your car out of the elements. It's pretty easy for a garage to run out of space pretty quickly, especially if you have more than one vehicle. Strategically taking advantage of vertical storage increases your garage's capacity while keeping things organized.

You probably know that Costco sells tires from several major brands, but you might not know that the company also sells tire storage. The SafeRacks Wall-Mounted Heavy Duty Tire Rack bolts to your wall and holds up to 400 pounds. The rack extends between 31 and 56 inches, depending on the width of your tires, and it can accommodate tires up to 34 inches tall. Keeping your spare tires off the ground and on a rack both clears up garage space and keeps your tires safe and organized until you need them.

A generator is a great way to make your home more energy independent and ensure the lights stay on when the grid goes down. Most generators run on liquid fuel like gasoline or propane, but the EcoFlow DELTA 2 Max Portable Solar Generator is solar powered and fully electric.

You can charge up the generator with the included 220 watt solar panels or plug it into your home outlet for a quick recharge. In an outlet, it can charge up to 80 percent in a little over an hour. The system generates up to 2.6 kWh of electricity and you can up the storage capacity to 6 kWh by adding up to two extra batteries.

Bifacial solar panels collect sunlight directly on the front and capture reflected or ambient light on the back, resulting in up to 28% more energy collection. When it's time to use the generator, it has six AC power outlets and can run up to 15 devices at the same time.

The Yard Force 22-inch Corded Electric Leaf Shredder comes with pretty much everything you need to make yard cleanup easier. You can drop raked leaves, lawn clippings, and other yard debris inside, and the shredder will chew them up and drop them into a bag below or back onto your yard to act as a nutrient-rich mulch.

A slider on the side lets you choose the level of shredding, from fine to coarse. There are also settings for specific materials like wet leaves or pine needles. Instead of sharp metal blades, the leaf shredder works like an oversized weed eater, with a quickly moving nylon line breaking up yard debris.

The shredder's telescoping legs can be adjusted individually, so you can set up anywhere, even on uneven terrain. The included accessory kit comes with 10 shredder replacement lines, goggles, and a pair of hand rakes to make picking up piles of leaves even easier.

The Fanttik W10 APEX Mini Chainsaw is the portable, handheld miniature chainsaw you never knew you wanted. While it may not be capable of taking down full-sized trees, it can handle most of your everyday cutting needs like trimming low-hanging branches.

Instead of gasoline, this electric mini chainsaw is powered by a 2,500 mAh battery, and it charges with an ordinary USB-C cable. It apparently gets a full charge in about an hour and an LED display tells you how much battery life remains. It has three cutting modes to handle cutting lumber in your workshop or trimming trees in the yard, and it comes with a protective cover, lubricating oil, and charging cable.

Its 4-inch blade is big enough to handle most of the growth you'll find in your yard and small enough to carry around comfortably. Weighing in at under three pounds, it's light enough to do all of your trimming without getting fatigued. While we don't recommend chainsawing at night, it does feature a built-in LED flashlight to help you see in low lighting conditions. If you need a more powerful chainsaw, check out our ranking of major chainsaw brands for guidance.

You probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about your electrical outlet covers, which might be why none of us realized they've been coasting for decades. The SnapPower GuideLight 2 LED Outlet Cover looks and works like a conventional outlet cover with one important difference, it has a built-in LED light.

Installation is easy. All you have to do is remove your existing outlet covers and snap the new ones into place. Once lined up, a single screw holds the outlet cover in place. Remember, make sure you cut the power to that part of your house before you start using tools around electrical outlets.

The LED light gently lights up your outlet so you can see more clearly when plugging in your devices in the dark. It also serves as accent lighting, to help you while searching for a midnight snack. It can also act as a night light in a child's bedroom. Perhaps the cover's best feature is that it lights up automatically when it gets dark and then slowly dims as it gets lighter.

A screen door is humanity's answer to the question, "is it possible to be both inside and outside at the same time?" A screen door lets air and light into your home while keeping bugs, vermin, and other unwanted visitors out. This one retracts into itself instead of swinging in or out, so you can have a screen door only when you want one.

An aluminum frame keeps the retractable screen door sturdy and you can choose between four different colors: white, brown, light brown, and black. It fits doors between 32 inches and 36 inches across, and you can choose among three different heights, 78, 80, or 96 inches tall.

A pair of thin horizontal stripes at the top and bottom serve as a warning for any kids (or clumsy adults) who might accidentally walk through it. Because the screen door is retractable, you can use it as a semipermeable barrier when you want it and move it totally out of the way when you don't.

Even with the benefit of a hot water heater, we often have to wait a little while to get hot water out of the faucet. That's mostly because you first have to let all of the water already in the pipes flow through the faucet before the hot water can arrive. This hot water dispenser puts a miniature water heater right at the faucet for essentially instantaneous control over the water temperature.

The InSinkErator HOT250 Instant Hot & Cold Water Dispenser System is designed to be convenient and safe. A dial on the front lets you set your desired hot water temperature between 160 and 200 degrees Fahrenheit and the hot water handle is spring loaded. You have to hold the handle open to get hot water out, and it automatically shuts off as soon as you let go. The cold water handle, by contrast, can be left open and flowing. Additionally, for the health conscious hydrators among you, this dispenser comes with an included filter that removes metals and other common contaminants.

Electric vehicles are becoming more common, which means more and more drivers are looking for charging solutions at home. It's possible to plug many EVs directly into your existing electrical grid with an ordinary electrical outlet, but the charging times are long. You'll typically only get 5 or 6 miles of range for every hour of charging. The EcoFlow PowerPulse EV Charger and Delta Pro Ultra Home Backup Power gives you access to level 2 charging, which is what you typically get at public charging stations.

With this EV charger, you'll get roughly 35 miles of range after an hour of charging and the system doubles as backup power for your home, letting you run appliances off the same batteries that charge your car. It automatically conserves 20% of its capacity for use in the event of a power outage.

A single battery carries 6 kWh of energy and you can expand that up to 90 kWh with additional batteries. You can also connect to a set of solar panels to make your home entirely energy independent. The system switches on within 20 milliseconds of a power loss, so you might not even notice if the grid goes down. The kit comes with an inverter, an EV charger, and five EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra Extra batteries for a power capacity of 30 kWh.

Throughout human history, a lot of energy and innovation has gone into figuring out how to clean up after we use the bathroom. In the deep past, people used a wide variety of materials including stones, shells, animal furs, leaves, moss, broken pieces of ceramic pots, sponges on sticks, corn cobs, and more. By the late 19th century, rolls of toilet paper were coming into vogue and they have remained one of the main ways we clean up, even now.

The bidet emerged around the same time as toilet paper and is perhaps the most effective solution to date. What began as simple water basins has evolved into a built-in toilet fixture connected to indoor plumbing. The Brondell Swash CL1700 Bidet Toilet Seat has a built-in bidet and air dryer for a full service bathroom experience.

You can customize the temperature and water pressure coming out of a self-cleaning nozzle made of stainless steel. A heated seat keeps your tushy comfortable and a blue LED nightlight gives you visibility during those late-night bathroom visits. You can control your bidet with the included remote control and set up preferred presets for two users, so you can use the bathroom like it's the year 3000.