Clearance is not random. It just dresses like it is.
We’ve kept a running markdown calendar for Costco for years over at costco97.com, built from a decade of member reports and our own receipts. The rhythm is real: seasonal merchandise rolls into the center of the store on a schedule, and it rolls out on one too. The other chains run the same playbook with different dates. Here’s the whole year, chain by chain, with the specific windows we’d bet on.
At Costco, the last Christmas items die in the first week of the new year, and the sleeper move happens even earlier: unsold turkeys and prime rib get slashed in the first couple of days of January. A January 2nd prime rib at a fraction of the December 23rd price is one of the most reliable flexes in the building. The big-format wines and holiday gift sets start fading now too, along with cold-weather clothing.
At Target, holiday clearance runs on a famous day count: 50% off starting December 26, dropping to 70% around day four or five, and hitting 90% in the first days of January. Target has never published that schedule. Ten thousand shoppers have documented it anyway. Home Depot’s holiday section rides its usual countdown – the cents column will tell you where it stands – with stragglers going to pennies by mid-January.
One myth to retire: January is not the month for cheap treadmills. January is when stores SELL treadmills, at full price, to optimists. Hold that thought for thirty days.
Here’s the one that surprises everybody. Costco clears exercise equipment and luggage in the first two weeks of February – right after resolution season peaks, right when the floor space is needed for patio furniture. Free weights, treadmills, yoga mats, all of it. Indoor furniture follows in the second and third week. Lunar New Year foods and the last of the magnum wines close out the month. February is quietly one of the best clearance months of the year, and it has almost no competition in the aisles.
Costco clears televisions in March. Stores stock deep for the Super Bowl, the game ends, and the overflow goes on markdown while everyone assumes TV deals only happen in November. March also takes down kitchen utensils, serveware, and stoneware. If your kitchen drawer has been threatening retirement, this is its month.
Garden and outdoor goods clear in waves – fertilizer, planters, outdoor lights and accessories start stepping down in April, and by June the outdoor furniture itself joins in. Easter merchandise dies fast in the two weeks after the holiday.
The a-ha in this stretch: swimwear and summer clothing start clearing at Costco in May, while summer is still warming up. Costco moves its apparel calendar earlier than your actual life. Buy next year’s suits before this year’s pool opens and you’ll never pay full price for swim gear again.
Industry-wide, outdoor living gets purged starting mid-to-late July, because back-to-school needs the floor and the floor does not negotiate. At Costco that means summer clothing, BBQ sauces, and – a specific we love – MLB tickets hitting clearance mid-season. Home Depot’s garden purge begins its long .06 cascade. When we checked Target’s patio section this very week, every single item sat at exactly 15% off – the first tier of a ride that ends far lower for whatever survives. Patience or speed both work in July. Full price does not.
Costco’s home furniture and lighting arrive in July and clear in August – one of the fastest turns in the store, blink and it’s gone. Summer activity gear (paddle boards, camping, beach everything) collapses now too. Meanwhile the first wrapping paper and ribbon arrive on the floor, looking suspiciously like Christmas items in stealth mode, because they are. At Walmart, the summer seasonal aisles convert to hidden clearance around now – the shelf tags won’t admit it, but the app will.
Back-to-school leftovers collapse everywhere – backpacks, lunch bags, notebooks at Costco, mini fridges and bedding at Target. The last of the furniture and lighting clears at Costco. And in late September, artificial Christmas trees start appearing, which is either upsetting or exciting depending on your relationship with time.
Halloween math is simple: costumes hit 50% on November 1 and are gone by November 3. But October’s real a-ha at Costco is appliances – stoves, microwaves, washers, dryers, and ovens go on clearance as the floor resets for holiday merchandise. Everyone waits for Black Friday appliance deals. The quiet October markdown frequently beats them, without the parking lot.
Costco starts marking down some holiday decor and toys in mid-November – before the Black Friday ads even air. By December, the purge is general: decor, wrap, gift baskets, hot cocoa, throws, toys. And across chains, the sharpest move of the season is checking toy aisles around December 20, when quiet markdowns start catching last-minute shoppers. Most people assume toy clearance starts December 26. The good stuff is often gone by then.
The deepest clearance doesn’t follow the weather. It follows the planogram reset – the scheduled remodel of a section, on a corporate calendar with zero regard for how warm it is outside. That’s why patio dies in July and treadmills die in February. The reset date is the real deadline; every markdown before it is the store negotiating with the calendar. When you see employees re-taping shelf labels in an aisle, that section’s clearance is about to get serious. Not folklore. Logistics.
The price codes in our price tag phrasebook tell you how deep a markdown is. This calendar tells you when to start looking. Put them together and you’re running the system we’ve run at Costco for ten years, across every chain at once.
Or let us do the legwork: we watch these windows across Costco, Walmart, Sam’s Club, BJ’s, Home Depot, Target, and the online outlets, and post what surfaces. Catch a purge starting early in your area? Share the find and make a few hundred strangers unreasonably happy.