NEW YORK (WCBS 880) - In these challenging economic times, we can learn something from an expert bargain shopper.

One such person is Brie Dyas, who shops for a living and writes about it for diylife.com.

WCBS 880′s Pat Farnack With Brie Dyas

“An estate sale is basically a garage sale on steroids,” Dyas tells WCBS 880′s Pat Farnack. “Absolutely everything in the house is on sale. That means everything from antiques to, sometimes, cars to even a nice little China set.”

Sometimes an estate sale is beautifully set up, like walking on to a Hollywood set. Others just pile stuff in a house.

“It really depends on who is organizing it. These outside estate sale companies are responsible for creating these estate sales and some people take a lovely curated approach, which looks like a set when you walk in, and others decide to take a more, let’s say, treasure hunter approach and just pile everything on, stick some price tags on, and let you, you know, fend for yourself,” says Dyas.

Estate sales can be a great place to find furnishings for your home.

“Estate sales can be a great place to find furniture. If we want to get secondhand furniture because lord knows how expensive retail furniture is nowadays, if we want to go the secondhand route, really what are we going to do? We’re gonna go on Craigslist, which I call the second Ikea because everything from Ikea ends up on Craigslist. So, you can go to an estate sale and get high quality wood furniture that’s withstood the test of time. Maybe it’s not antique, but it’s high quality, great was treasured by a family and you can get it for a bargain,” Dyas says.

You find out about estate sales by checking www.weekendtreasures.com, www.estatesales.org, or Brie’s favorite dustyoldbags.com.