As I gathered up the mail towards the end of December, it occured to me that something was missing. And I don't mean Christmas cards, although come to think of it, my numbers were definitely down this year.

No, I'm talking about those special undersized catalogs with nothing but post-Christmas bargains that I used to get from J. Crew, L. L. Bean, Lands End, Talbot's, and Garnet Hill.

It doesn't seem that long ago, but I guess I'm talking about another age. I'd get the mail and there would be one or two end-of-the-year sale catalogs. And time would stop as I'd get out the Post-It notes, the coffee, and the credit cards and then settle down to comb through the sale catalogs looking for all the stuff I was too cheap to pay retail for.

Now I'm lucky if I get one of them. Mostly the sale stuff is buried in the middle or back of a regular catalog. No, if I really want to get access to a lot of information about sales, print is dead. For bargain hunting in my jammies, nothing beats the internet.

I assume you already have your favorite websites. And you realize that if you type in J. Crew sale or Gap sale or Neiman Marcus sale, you'll hit pay dirt, without having to comb through a lot of full-price merchandise.

But what if you're looking for something particular that you could buy at any one of a number of stores? Not something made by the Gap, but, say, a Wacoal bra? How well can you do at home if you don't know where to find the merchandise on line?

As a test case, I decided that I really, really, badly need another Horny Toad microfleece sweatshirt. I own one, and every time it's clean, I wear it. So basically, getting a second one would pretty much double my wardrobe. 

Well, I bought the original sweatshirt at a brick and morter store, so to find another one like it, I head to www.froogle.com, which brings me to the Google shopping site. I type in "Horny Toad" and click the "Free shipping" box. The top search choice in the official Horny Toad site. I discover they're offering free ground shipping and a $20 gift card with each order of $100.

So I pick out my new sweatshirt!

The "Edina" style in flea.

OK, and some other stuff.

Honestly, their microfleece is the softest thing you've ever touched. And everything was marked way down.

But that isn't enough for me. Because I also have to do a search for "Horny Toad discount code" to see whether I can come across an extra discount.

And I do. It's about fifth or sixth on the list, but I found a code that gives me 5 percent off, plus donates an additional 10 percent to an environmental charity.

So let's see. Free shipping? Check. $20 gift card? Check. Ten percent of proceeds going to a charity? Check. Five percent discount off the already discounted price? Check. 

So it's not a glossy sale catalog--but if you use a shopping search engine and do a separate search for discount codes, you can do very, very well. And what's even better--you still get to do it in your pajamas.