It's five days until payday, and you're rifling through jacket pockets and old purses, scrounging for change. But did you remember to look in the basement? Or the attic, the back of the closets, the garage and the kids' rooms?

Selling your old stuff can be easy and cheap, whether it's through garage sales, online auctions, classified ads or consignment stores.

The key, regardless of where and how you decide to sell, is smart marketing, says Bruce Littlefield, the author of "Garage Sale America," a book exploring garage-sale culture.

"If you say something is junk, it's junk," Littlefield says. But tell the story of this thing for sale -- it was Aunt Ida's before she passed away, it was a wedding gift to your parents, it was a treasure from your childhood -- and, "suddenly, it's worth more," says Littlefield, who's often featured on the "Quick Fixes" segment of NBC's "Today" show.

Garage sales