It’s early January, and “Lost” star Jorge Garcia is back in Hawaii after spending Christmas in Wisconsin. He still has time before filming begins on the final episodes of the island castaway drama’s last season, but thoughts that the end is nigh are creeping in.

“It feels good still,” he says. “We know that sadness is on deck, but we’re not going there just yet.”

Or are we?

Says Garcia, “Now, you’re starting to look around the house, thinking, ‘How am I going to pack up all I’ve amassed over six years?’ ”

Might there be a “Lost” garage sale?

“There might definitely be some Craigslist-ing,” Garcia says.

Before “Lost,” returning Tuesday on ABC, Garcia was best known for doing 13 episodes of the CBS series “Becker,” so his role as unlucky lottery winner Hugo “Hurley” Reyes changed his career and his life.

“Totally, completely,” he says. “When I got the pilot, I didn’t even have a script yet to read. I just knew it was (producer) J.J. Abrams, and it shot in Hawaii. So I figured, if anything, I’d have a little Hawaiian vacation out of it, and that was good enough for me.”

In the years since, Garcia has also made forays into social media, starting out with a MySpace page.

“I just found,” he says, “with all the personal messages and stuff, that the workload got really big. I’m still not at a place where I’m comfortable hiring someone to answer mail and send it for me. So it started getting where I’d spend two hours answering messages.”

Instead, Garcia started a blog called “Dispatches From the Island,” which has included gems like photos of the show’s 100th-episode cake; “Nunu’s Advent Calendar of Stuff She Likes to Chew,” featuring Garcia’s tiny Chihuahua-dachshund mix; and the epic YouTube video series “Jorge and Beth’s Rat Incident,” featuring a rat and the hysterical reactions to it from Garcia’s girlfriend, Beth.

“I think I’ll have to come up with a new one with a different title,” Garcia says, “when I’m not on the island anymore. It’s been fun. I’ll definitely keep doing it in some way.”

“Lost” became a worldwide hit, but Garcia says remembering that isn’t always easy far across the sea.

“We’re kind of protected shooting in Hawaii, in a way. You can convince yourself that you’re just doing a little show that you and your friends do, and you don’t think about the huge phenomenon it’s become worldwide, until you start doing international press, or if you go to Comic-Con or things like that. You begin to see the level of the fan base.

“It’s going to be interesting, because there’s this idea of coming back to Los Angeles. It’s like you went away to make your fortune, and now you’re returning home.”

Of course, this wasn’t exactly planned.

“Originally,” Garcia says, “I remember seeing an old breakdown where Hurley was in his 50s and wasn’t going to survive the pilot. So I’m glad I was able to change their minds.

“They had a rough list of some people to put in the show, but when they were casting us – and it was late in casting season – they ended up really concentrating on finding actors they wanted to work with and not worrying too much on how it’s all going to fit just yet.

“So they ended up creating the part for me, after they met me. I had read for Sawyer, and they chatted with me for a little while. They ended up writing scenes for me, when I actually tested for the role.”

Asked what will change after the series wraps, Garcia says, “I probably will give a nice close shave. Periodically it’s just nice to feel real clean in the face.”

As to whether co-star Josh Holloway, who plays Sawyer, will also lose the scruff, Garcia says, “He said he was going to shave his head when it was all over. He probably could be talked out of it.”