A seasonal clearance calendar for penny hunters

Published October 3, 2026 · Penny Recon

Most penny finds are the tail end of a seasonal reset. When a department makes room for the next season, last season's stock is marked down in steps, and the units nobody buys are eventually flagged for removal at $0.01. Knowing roughly when each department turns over tells you where to look.

The lag matters more than the start date. The first clearance tag is the beginning of the ladder, not the end. Items typically sit in clearance for weeks, sometimes months, before the final penny step, and every store moves at its own pace. Watch a department from the day it first goes yellow, and expect pennies to arrive in a trickle afterwards rather than all at once.

Month by month

When	What is usually clearing	Where to look
January	Christmas decorations, lights and inflatables; leftover holiday gift sets	Garden centre and seasonal aisle, often consolidated onto a few pallets
February to March	Winter seasonal stock as the spring set arrives: heaters, snow and ice tools, winter weather gear	Seasonal aisle and the front of the store, plus overheads as space is cleared
April to May	Indoor products displaced by the spring garden set; last year's outdoor décor that never sold	Ends of aisles near the garden centre
June to July	Early patio markdowns, slow-moving outdoor furniture colours, spring planters and décor	Patio displays and the back of the garden centre
August to September	Patio furniture, fire pits, grills and accessories, outdoor string lights, summer cooling gear, and Halloween and fall stock arriving behind it	Garden centre perimeter, outdoor racking, seasonal aisle
October to November	Remaining summer and patio stock reaching its final steps; Halloween décor after October 31	Seasonal aisle and overstock pallets
December	Fall and Thanksgiving décor; product-line changes in tools and storage ahead of the new year	Seasonal aisle; tool and storage bays during resets

This is a general guide to how seasonal retail turns over, not a published Home Depot schedule. Regional climate shifts the timing, and stores in warmer states often run outdoor departments later.

What our own data shows

The Penny Recon list in September 2026 bore this out. Fire pits, outdoor string lights, garden hoses, landscape edging and summer cooling gear such as cooling towels and hats all showed up as penny reports as summer stock finished its markdowns. Live counts by department are on which departments penny most, and each weekly report breaks down what was new that week.

Not everything is seasonal

Seasonal resets explain a large share of penny finds, but not all of them. Product-line changes produce pennies all year: when a manufacturer updates a tool, a smart home device or a faucet range, the outgoing model clears regardless of season. Smart home cameras and doorbells, plumbing fixtures and lighting all generate pennies this way. So do discontinued colours and finishes, which is why a single variant of a product can penny while its siblings stay at full price.

Using the calendar

Note when a department first goes to clearance at your store, and the date printed on the clearance tags.
Check back every week or two. As the tag dates age and the gap between the original price and the clearance price widens, you are nearing the end of the ladder.
When an item from that department starts appearing on the penny list from other states, scan yours.

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