MINNEAPOLIS — Ella Stewart’s shopping cart overflowed with toys and games as she wheeled it and her animated 1-year-old daughter, Allonnah, to the Kmart layaway desk this month.

Stewart usually shops at the Wal-Mart store near her home in north Minneapolis, but said she trekked across town to Kmart because Wal-Mart no longer offers the service.

"Layaway helps me budget better," she said, unloading a Dora the Explorer tricycle, Campout Adventure play set and some squeezable, talking dolls. "It makes it a lot easier to get the things I want to get my family for Christmas."

With credit tight and consumers leery of taking on debt, some retailers are dusting off the once-popular pay-as-you-go option. Kmart has made layaway the centerpiece of a national ad campaign it launched a few weeks ago. Sears, whose parent company also owns Kmart, just announced last week that it was bringing layaway back. Best Buy Co. Inc. is testing it at a handful of stores in the Midwest.

"Now that credit isn't readily available, the consumer is saying, 'I'd love to buy it but I don't have the money,'" said Marshal Cohen, chief retail analyst for market researcher NPD Group. "So retailers are adding layaway to the equation."

Layaway grew out of the Great Depression, where consumers could set aside goods they wanted and make regular installments until the debt was paid and they got to take the goods home.

The concept got shoved to the back of the storeroom in the 1980s, as easy credit begot a get-it-now, pay-later consumer culture. In recent years, retailers have put gift cards and their own profitable credit card rewards programs at center stage, turning layaway into an expensive, space-hogging, antiquated service.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. discontinued the bulk of its service in 2006 because it was deemed too costly, though it still offers layaway for fine jewelry.