You can park your car in the garage again or turn your attic into living space you can actually use, thanks to a cottage industry targeting procrastinating pack rats who can't seem to part with stuff they'll never use.

Helping you put the spring back into spring cleaning even before spring begins, eBay's trading assistants will help you overcome fears of selling online and the dread of garage sales that never empty the garage.

For those who have junk no one wants -- not even your municipal waste removal or recycling service -- an often imitated, but never duplicated six-year-old franchise operation 1-800-Got-Junk is coming soon to a community near you or is already hauling away heaps in your neighborhood without parking one out in front.

In both cases, reclaiming space in your home can be a relatively hassle-free online experience lasting only a few minutes.

It's a lot easier to keep that resolution to organize your home if you can get rid of stuff you really don't need and, when it's time to sell, an uncluttered home is a faster-selling home.

What's more, if you can make a few bucks in the process, well, why not?

Thanks to the new services, perhaps your habit of putting off has finally paid off.

Trading Assistants

Good help is easy to find under eBay's "Services" menu choice. Plug your ZIP code into the trading assistants area and, chances are, you'll find a dozen or more in your neighborhood.

Some eBay trading assistants will pick up your unwanted treasures, others require that you drop them off. Some are work-at-home specialists -- say in collectables, electronics, toys or video games -- others are one-stop nationwide inlets (as opposed to outlets) like QuikDrop, iSold It, AuctionDrop and FoundValue.

Some of the digital consignment shops charge a hefty commission, as high as 50 percent of the sales price -- hey, it's for a task you put off -- others come with negotiable fees.

More than 30,000 of the electronic pawn shops are registered with eBay with the larger inlets doing more of the digital leg work -- creating eBay listings, managing the auctions and handling shipping.

Now all you have to do is decide which trading assistant to use.

Don't expect to unload junk on trading assistants.

They've been around the trading block a few times and they know what will sell and what won't.

1-800-Got-Junk

For stuff so worthless you need to pay someone to haul it away, a new industry leader is building a brand for the first time in what traditionally has been the mom-and-pop junk hauling industry.

Franchiser 1-800-Got-Junk fills the gap when your local garbage collector and recycling service leaves you holding the bag.

Instead of a rickety junk hauling heap that looks like it needs a ride to the junk yard more than your stuff, Got Junk's sparkling green, white and blue dumpsters on the wheels of Ford F-450s, Nissan UD 1400s, or Isuzu NPRs, hauls stuff that's too small to justify a construction bin, but too big for the trash can.

Got Junk workers -- dressed in clean navy slacks, tucked-in royal-blue golf shirts with logo, baseball cap, and matching belts and boots, rather than sweat drenched t-shirts and grimy overalls -- will clear the attic, basement or garage of just about everything but hazardous materials and sweep up afterward, charging about $400 to fill a half-bin sized truck, including dumping fees. The company's average load is half the capacity but it will also unload smaller individual items like a dishwashers or washing machines for less than $100.

Franchises often pick up recycling items for free -- especially if the recycling center will pay them for the items. You don't get a cut.

The nearly $13 million-a-year company is the brainchild of Brian Scudamore, a 33-year-old Canadian college drop-out whose approach to business made the Vancouver-based company one of the fastest-growing franchises in North America. Most of the 74 territories are in the U.S. -- where households apparently generate more junk than Canada.

Households can call the toll-free 1-800-GOT-JUNK number or go online and use the company's $500,000 JunkNet service to quickly book a haul -- or get some books hauled.

Published: January 13, 2005

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the Web site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for "Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home" (Nolo $24.99) and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.