February 16, 1984

WHEN Janet Holmes made plans to move from her large house to an apartment in Westchester, she did what many people do these days. Even before calling the moving company, she telephoned the tag-sale professionals. ''I had a houseful to sell, and I knew I couldn't tackle the job without help,'' she recalled. ''I didn't know enough about pricing or how to set up a sale or attract customers. Besides, I didn't want to watch while people commented and pulled apart the things I've lived with and loved for years.'' The sale, it turns out, was a success. Not only did she net a few thousand dollars more than she expected but she even disposed of some items that weren't on sale. ''People actually bought boxes of rusty nails and a pile of grocery bags I earmarked for the trash,'' Mrs. Holmes said.

Businesses increased their inventories by four-tenths of 1 percent in December, but sales rose six times as fast to a record level, the Commerce Department said today. With sales rising so much faster than inventories, the closely watched inventory-to-sales ratio - the amount of time it would take to use up available stocks - fell to a new low of 1.31 months. The ratio had been 1.34 months in November.

IT'S tough, said 25-year-old Alix Phillips, who moved here from San Francisco less than two years ago. The phrase is echoed by most of the young men and women who are beginning their careers and are ensconced in their first New York apartments. It's tough, primarily, to pay the rent, even for college graduates earning more than minimal salaries. Their housing is usually a disproportionate percentage of take-home pay. And because it almost always eats up a third or more of their salaries after taxes, financial leeway for day- to-day expenses and furnishings is limited.

IT used to be taken as read that French gardens were severe and mathematical. Paradigms of logic and order, they were places in which nature was forbidden to go her own way. Ruler and protractor had gone to work at an early stage, and an invisible but very large labor force made sure that those geometries were kept in perfect shape. Gravel was raked several times a day. Hedges took on the forms of cone and cylinder, obelisk and cannonball. Borders were trimmed to within a fraction of an inch. Chance was outlawed and every shadow knew its place.

A man free on parole after a manslaughter conviction was arrested in a Bronx hospital early yesterday and charged with murdering a New York City police officer and wounding two others. The officers were shot Tuesday night in the driveway of a Bronx gasoline station after two of them, getting out of a patrol car, tried to question the man about the theft of a moped, according to the police. One of the officers, 30-year-old Thomas P. Ruotolo, was slain with a single shot to the head at a range of less than five feet. His partner, Tanya L. Brathwaite, 23, responded with a single shot from her service revolver, but she fell to the ground with a bullet in her lower back.