Harding Street garage sale returns Sept. 5 for a 16th year

The Harding Street Community Garage Sale opens for its 16th year on Saturday, Sept. 5, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., according to the flyer and post published by the sale's own Facebook group. That gives shoppers a five-hour window to buy secondhand items from participants.

A current Facebook Marketplace listing from the sale promotes the event as a garage sale and says the items will be shown in photos, which is how participants are inviting buyers. Notices circulating with a 2 p.m. closing time are not supported by the organizers' post, which ends the sale at 1 p.m.

Harding Street is in Wichita Falls. The city's official mapbook index lists it as FM Road 3393, placing the sale in the wider North Texas country rather than in Gainesville. A post from the same Facebook group in 2025 described that year's event as the 15th annual, held over Labor Day weekend, and said many kinds of items would be available.

Wichita Falls says on its municipal FAQ that garage-sale permits are not required in the city, while limiting garage sales to four per calendar year and no more than three consecutive days. Gainesville arrived at a similar position a decade ago. The City Council adopted a garage-sale ordinance in 2016 after complaints about continuous garage sales, limiting residents to four sales a year, requiring at least 30 days between them and capping each at 72 hours. That ordinance did not create a permit requirement.

Other towns in the region set stricter terms. Sherman approved Ordinance 6886 on Nov. 3, 2025, and its current garage-sale page says permits carry no fee, sales may not exceed three consecutive days, and no more than three permits may be issued for one location in a 12-month period. Little Elm requires a permit, allows each address three sales per calendar year with 30 days between them, and charges $11 online, a fee that includes five town-specified signs. Lake Worth requires an in-person permit at least one business day before the sale, allows two sales per address each year, caps permits at three consecutive days, and charges $5 for two signs or $7.50 for three.

The Texas Comptroller's office says an individual selling personal-use items can qualify for the occasional-sales exemption as long as sales stay at or below $3,000 for the calendar year. Past that threshold, and after more than two sales, later taxable sales require a sales-tax permit and tax collection. The agency says group sales, including neighborhood flea markets and miscellaneous secondhand-article sales for charity or special events, do not qualify for the individual exemption unless another exemption applies.

EPA's national figures for 2018 count more than 146 million tons of municipal solid waste sent to landfills that year. Textiles and wood, categories relevant to common garage-sale goods such as clothing and furniture, accounted for about 23 million tons of that total.

The Census Bureau estimates Wichita Falls had about 102,000 residents as of July 1, 2025, slightly below its 2020 estimates base, while Gainesville has run the other direction, growing close to 7 percent over the same span to roughly 18,500.