A brand new year has started and the hol­i­day sea­son is com­ing to a end.  You have prob­a­bly vis­ited more shop­ping malls and depart­ment stores than you are will­ing to admit and frankly you are sick of it.  How­ever if you are a smart and savvy shop­per, you have saved a lit­tle bit of money for what I like to call “Mid-January Blowout Deals”.  Yes folks, there are great deals to be found and in my expe­ri­ence the best ones pop up within the two months.  Here is a list of the top 15 post-Christmas items to pur­chase at deeply dis­counted prices:

1) Christ­mas any­thing — dec­o­ra­tions, gift bags, lights, cards and more.  Every­thing is at least 50% off and if you don’t mind stor­ing the stuff for a year, this is the best time to find deals on Christ­mas mer­chan­dise.
2) Christ­mas themed mer­chan­dise — can­dles, tis­sue boxes, choco­lates and more.  Every year com­pa­nies put out Christ­mas themed items such as pep­per­mint can­dles, candy-cane-shaped choco­late and shiny red tis­sue boxes.  And of course, when the hol­i­day sea­son is over the remain­ing items go on sale.  Keep a watch out for things that may apply to two or more hol­i­days.  I always pur­chase red wrap­per choco­lates and give them out on Valentine’s Day.  Guess what?  No one knows the dif­fer­ence and the choco­lates are still within the expiry date.
3) Gift sets — per­fume, sham­poo, razors, body wash, bath items and more.  I have been known to stock my shelves with noth­ing but items from post-Christmas gift sets.  I buy items I will use over the year at a frac­tion of the cost and some­times even get a bonus item.  Just remem­ber, gift sets are noth­ing but every­day prod­ucts in fancy pack­ag­ing!
4) Weight loss items — tread mills, diet pills, gym mem­ber­ships, weights and more.  One of the top three New Year’s res­o­lu­tions is to lose weight, get healthy and stay fit.  If this is your goal for the next year, now is a good time to invest a lit­tle money to help you get into shape!
5) Elec­tron­ics — dig­i­tal cam­eras, com­put­ers, tele­vi­sions and more.  A new year means new tech­nol­ogy.  Many elec­tron­ics shops are receiv­ing new stock and they need to get rid of last year’s mod­els.  If you don’t mind own­ing some­thing that is not the lat­est tech­nol­ogy, then this is the time to pick up your new gad­get.
6) Win­ter Cloth­ing — We have now reached the mid­dle of the win­ter sea­son (hope­fully) and gen­er­ally this is the time many win­ter items go on sale.  It is some­times bet­ter to wait until mid-February to get a really great deals on these items, how­ever if you want selec­tion, now is the time to buy win­ter mer­chan­dise.
7) Toys — It is not uncom­mon for many stores to over­stock the toy depart­ment for the hol­i­day sea­son.  Even though it seems the kids got way too many toys for Christ­mas there are always birth­days, baby show­ers and more, so stock up for the upcom­ing year!
8 ) Orga­ni­za­tion Items — stor­age con­tain­ers, shelves, bas­kets and more.  Another com­mon New Year’s res­o­lu­tion is to get more orga­nized.  This is usu­ally fueled by the ques­tion “Where are we going to put all the new stuff?”  If you need to declut­ter your life, now is a good time to pur­chase items to help you achieve your goal.
9) Quit Smok­ing Aids — This is a really com­mon goal among most smok­ers.  And not sur­pris­ingly, they choose a new year as their start date to stop smok­ing.  Thus, many com­pa­nies will issue dis­counts or high value coupons on stop smok­ing aids to assist in your new ven­ture to be smoke free.
10) Auto­mo­biles — A major goal for most car deal­er­ships is pro­mot­ing the lat­est model.  And obvi­ously, the lat­est model is not a 2011 vehi­cle.  There is a notice­able dif­fer­ence in the price between a new and old model.  And really, some­times the new model isn’t that much dif­fer­ent than the old one.
11) Office Sup­plies — Tax time is right around the cor­ner and luck­ily most office sup­ply com­pa­nies want to help you get your taxes done.  There are usu­ally great deals on office mer­chan­dise start­ing around mid-February.
12) Snow Blow­ers — I wouldn’t rush out for a snow blower right now, how­ever towards mid-March I would watch the fly­ers for snow blower dis­counts.  As far as the stores are con­cerned, they want these off their show­room floors to make room for gar­den­ing tools.
13) Sheets & Tow­els — It is a mys­tery to me as to why these items go on sale in Jan­u­ary, but every year there is a White Sale some­where.  Maybe this has some­thing to do with get­ting orga­nized?  Any­way, the prices on linens are fan­tas­tic at this time of year, so get out there and treat your­self to a new set of 1000 thread count Egypt­ian cot­ton sheets! 
14) Gift Returns/Exchanges — You get three iden­ti­cal DVD play­ers for Christ­mas and now you have to return two of them.  How­ever, some­times by the time it trav­els home with the orig­i­nal pur­chaser, gets wrapped, stored until Christ­mas, opened, and finally returned, the box is look­ing a lit­tle used.  There is noth­ing wrong with the prod­uct, but the pack­ag­ing does not say “buy me”.  Stores will fre­quently accept these returns and then put them back out on the floor at a dis­counted price.  How­ever, be wary of these prod­ucts.  Make sure it is just the box that is a lit­tle beat up, and not the item you wish to pur­chase.
15) Jew­elry — Jan­u­ary, March and April are not tra­di­tion­ally “gift giv­ing months” unlike Feb­ru­ary (Valentine’s Day) and May (Mother’s Day).  So, in antic­i­pa­tion of slow sales most jew­elry stores will put their items on sale.  I rec­om­mend you buy now and avoid the price hike that occurs two weeks before any major gift-giving holiday.

You may be exhausted from Christ­mas shop­ping or dash­ing to get Box­ing Day deals, but don’t quit yet!  As I men­tioned before, some of the best deals are com­ing in the next few weeks.

Please let us know if we are miss­ing any items from this list!  Also, inform us of any great sales you have come across in the last few days.