In the past, when the December holidays came around, I always let out a miserly groan, grudgingly submitting to a minimum amount of financial ravishing and mall skulking. I’m sort of a stingy dude anyway, but consumer Christmas really gets my Scrooge on. Just thinking about the lines of shoppers makes me want to pick up my war club and crawl back into my pre-information age cave, safe amidst the other Neanderthals. But if my recent moving experience is any indication, I believe I’ve hit on a cost saving, fun way to turn Christmas shopping into an economically cheap, but anthropologically rich, community experience.

If there was ever a tool that made it possible for people to move without making so much trash, Craigslist (www.craigslist.org) is it. Having a garage sale is as easy as hauling out the junk/treasures and taking the 5 minutes to post a free ad. Accumulating new junk/treasures takes just a ten-minute look at the ads in your new city, and a couple weekend morning expeditions.

What’s best about the Craigslist assisted move, however, is that it’s fun on both ends. When Carla and I had our puny little yard sale in Cambrige this August, we made it an all day affair and invited our friends to stop by. It was a gorgeous summer day, and we spent most of it in a couple lawn chairs, chitchatting, sipping tea, and eating cheese and crackers. We priced our items to sell (for a good many of them, this meant they were free), and by the end of the day, we’d reduced our unwanted possessions to one small box. We left it out with a “free” sign on it, and within a couple days, everything in it was gone. We were amazed.

My college memories of the summer moving process are a bit darker. I remember this deluge of functional possessions, flooding out the dorm halls and into giant dumpsters set up on most street corners. Aside from the few entrepreneurial scavengers (I’ve heard of people making thousands of dollars by picking through the “trash” and reselling at this time of year), no one really benefits from this process. Stressed out, over burdened students feel crunched for time, the city landfill groans under the heavy load, and many people in need, new to the city or just short of the cash to buy expensive furniture, miss out on a great opportunity to extend the life of these goods. The dorm- based yard sale may be the wave of the future.

But for me, real epiphany came in the buying end of the move, not the selling. Once we got to San Diego, we again had to find stuff for our new apartment. Our timing was good; we arrived at the end of September and had a weekend just after payday, and there were a ton of garage sales, most posted on Craigslist. In one day, we were able to find a fantastic four-piece sofa for $45 (see picture), two desks for $50 combined, two bookcases for $28 combined, a large dresser for $8 (though Carla was not thrilled with the aesthetics of this purchase, a danger in this for a two-person move—be careful.), a nice drawing table for free (thrown in for taking the four piece sofa out of it’s former house), a microwave for $3, a huge selection of plants and pots, a fold out sofa-bed for $40, and all the kitchen utensils we needed for under $10. I was so tickled with the low cost of furnishing our apartment that I’ve been going to yard sales since, filling out the minor items that, while not absolutely necessary, have made our lives more convenient. Last weekend, I found a combination cuisinart-blender-cheese grater for $10, which I decided would be my final purchase. Carla still seeks a vermicomposter/opaque bin, which has been more difficult to come by. Items that store stuff are much harder to find at yard sales than items stored in them.

Aside from the pure joy I take in baahgin hunting, the yard sale experience has been an education for me about our new community. People literally put their lives on display, and because of this, it is a more personal, community oriented shopping experience than one could ever hope to find in a department store. Through yard sale-ing, Carla and I have toured at least a half a dozen neighborhoods in San Diego that we otherwise would have had no cause to visit. We’ve seen homes from the fifties (inside and out unchanged until now, it seems), met a man who turned his garage into a year round “Christmas Room” (complete with music boxes, toy trains, blinking lights, and heavily tinseled tree), and seen some fabulous Portuguese rock gardens. We’ve talked to people at all different stages of their lives—surfers gone broke, couples selling one of everything when moving in together, committed junk collectors doing their necessary annual purging, shyster estate salesmen, brothers and sisters selling the possessions of a deceased parent, and younger, toddler-toting parents happily disseminating the great bulge of infant related items no longer necessary. It’s been an amazingly rich kaleidoscope of San Diego life.

Of course, there are also frustrations and dead ends. Sometimes yard sales don’t really have much to offer, or you get there after they’ve been so thoroughly ravaged that, unless you need a frayed, three foot extension cord, you might as well have gone disc golfing. After a few rounds of yard saling, however, I feel qualified to offer a few tips about finding success in your yard sale shopping:

First, start early in the day and map out a number of yard sales in the same area. I’d recommend planning an itinerary around an estate sale, as they tend to have the widest selection of offerings. Visiting a number of yard sales in the same general area cuts down on your driving time and thus traffic aggravation. It also means that, if you start early, you can get to more sales before they’ve been entirely picked over. Think about the kinds of items you’re looking for and drive an appropriately sized vehicle. This way you can eliminate doing multiple long trips. And, of course, less driving uses fewer resources.

Second, if you’re looking for specific items, search for the keywords on Craigslist. The chances are good that someone who’s having a yard sale has written these items into their ad, and usually only if they deem them to be desirable. This will increase your yard sale efficiency immensely.

Third, embrace the yard sale eclectic school of interior design. Just because an item was purchased used at a garage sale doesn’t mean it can’t be something that has personal value for you. People sell a lot of nice furniture items at garage sales, and often they have stories that go along with them. If you can accept that the coffee table doesn’t exactly match the bookcase and the end table, you can make these stories part of your own and keep the narratives going. Who knows—maybe one day you’ll have an antique! And if you move again next year, you can pass it on to someone else in the same way. Neither Wal Mart nor Ethan Allen can compete with this ethos.

Last, be creative. Some pieces of furniture can have multiple uses. In our new apartment we’ve used an old baby changing table as our entertainment center. We dug this out of Carla’s parents’ garage, cleaned out the drawer, and wiped off the dust. It looks nice now, and has served perfectly well to hold a TV and a DVD player, which is all we really want in our living room anyway. And it was free! A new entertainment center, or even just a stand with a shelf, can cost well over $200. Well, I tuck my wallet into my chest and boldly declare that this drastic measure need never be taken.

Not even if you want that specific TV stand for Christmas. The best part of Craigslist/community yard sale shopping is that it means you’re extending the life of something that already exists, which is why I’m shopping this year for new stories, new characters, and used goods. Besides, this is a great time of year for yard sales in warm weather climates (I’m thinking about you Californians and Floridians especially!). Most people are preparing for the flood of new stuff by selling off their old. So oblige them with me! Be patient, frequent local garage sales if possible, and act if the deal feels right. Now Christmas shopping can be a fun way to see your city, meet some interesting people, and help preserve what we’ve got.

Andy Rice is a filmmaker and professional reenactor living in San Diego, California.