Families looking for extra income to help brave the stormy economy may want to take a look in the back of their bedroom closets or the dusty corners of their garages. Those tight-fitting clothes or that rusty lawnmower could earn some extra dollars at a yard sale.

Apparently, hundreds more families this year are peddling wares on their front lawns or driveways.

Yard sale listings across the country are up. Garage sale postings on Craigslist, one of the Internet's top sites for classified ads, rose 200 percent in the past two years.

Brightly colored signs advertising yard sales abounded in Miami on a recent weekend.

At a Sweetwater yard sale, shoppers browsed through lamps, animal cages, shoes, stuffed animals and assorted knick-knacks, looking for deals.

Kenia Cartagena said she was out looking for odds and ends to decorate her home. Since the recession began, she said, she limits her shopping to only garage sales.

Leslie Soriano, another shopper in Sweetwater, said garage sales and thrift stores help her cut down on her clothing budget.

``I could buy a pair of jeans for $50 or I could buy the same pair of jeans for $10 and the only difference is it's been worn a little,'' she said.

Soriano, who sells second-hand items herself, said it's easier to sell small-ticket items at yard sales than online because fees for posting, photos and shipping can erase profit margins. ``I think more people are going to garage sales because of how stifling eBay has been,'' she said.

Traffic to YardSaleSearch.com, a portal for potential sellers and bargain hunters, is up 16 percent from last year. And organizers of events such as the annual ``World's Longest Yard Sale'' -- a 654-mile bargain-fest in early August that stretches from Alabama to Ohio -- say more homes and communities are getting involved.

Similarly, Ray Saval, an organizer of the ``100-Mile Yard Sale'' held in mid-July in rural north-central Pennsylvania, reported that they added another 15 to 20 vendors this year.

``It keeps growing. It's actually 120 miles. . . . With every phone call it got longer,'' joked Fawn Sensenig, who works with Saval in setting up the annual Pennsylvania event organized by the Quehanna Industrial Development Corp.

Yard sale organizers or promoters suspect the economy is a large part of the surge in participation.

``More recently I've noticed a lot of sales mentioning downsizing or moving from a house to an apartment. I don't remember as many sales in the past mentioning that nearly everything in the house was for sale, so that might imply desperation or foreclosure in some cases,'' said Joel Risberg, webmaster for YardSaleSearch.com.

In Sweetwater, Honey Williams and her daughter Kathie Hutson expected a big turnout for their yard sale. But Hutson said her mother, a garage-sale veteran who likes to negotiate, had to lower her prices this year to make sales.

``We talked her into taking a little less, so we can get rid of some of this stuff,'' Hutson said.

Hutson said the yard sale had a close call when she almost forgot to apply for the $10 permit required by the city of Sweetwater. Miami-Dade County does not require a permit, but many local municipalities do.

Alexis Adams, who handles garage sale permits for Sweetwater, said this year she's noticed more garage sales in the area -- but not necessarily more permits.

``More people are hard up for money, and they'll try anything,'' she said. ``With or without permits.''

Miami Herald staff writer Joel Poelhuis contributed to this report, which was supplemented with material from The Associated Press.

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