Picture the first day of school. Your child goes off to school wearing a pair of sandals, zip-off pants, a T-shirt and a sweat shirt. In the backpack is a lunchbox with a water bottle, a pair of socks and sneakers for physical education class, a plastic container holding a cricket for show-and-tell, and a jump-rope.

Now, picture the end of the day. Your child comes off the bus, or walks home, or gets picked up at day care. Your child is now wearing sneakers but no socks, the zip-off pants zipped off and a T-shirt. In the backpack is a folder of papers from school, three books to cover, one sock and a water bottle but no lunchbox, one leg of the zip-off pants and a handful of wilting dandelions.

Where did the other sock, the lunchbox, the sweat shirt, the cricket and its container, the other leg of the zip-off pants, and the jump-rope go? If you are lucky, all the items ended up in Lost and Found and you or your child can retrieve them the next day.

At the beginning of the school year, the box or table or closet designated as the Lost and Found area quickly goes from empty to overflowing. In the early fall, you can find mostly sweat shirts, T-shirts, stray socks and a pair of sunglasses or two. By December, the sheer quantity of items is overwhelming – Lost and Found resembles a large department store stocked for a big sale.

A couple of years ago on the first day of boot weather, I went out to the hallway to make sure everyone had gotten all their belongings. I found three left boots and one right boot, all the same size, brand and color. We never figured out whether there was a third child with identical boots who ended up with two right boots or if the store had accidentally sold two left boots. I thought the parents of the children with the boots were going to figure out the boot situation. It turned out that the students figured it out. One day Andy wore the pair, and Tony wore the two left boots. The next day they switched.

Lunchboxes are often found in Lost and Found. The empty ones are OK. Finding a child’s lunchbox with leftover tuna fish sandwich and chocolate milk after three weeks is not a pleasant experience. My professional advice at that point is to provide an appropriate end-of-life event for both the lunchbox and its contents, then go out and invest in brown paper bags.

Lost and Found is not limited to elementary schools. Middle schools and high schools also have Lost and Found areas, sometimes several. There is a Lost and Found in each of the locker rooms, and many teachers have their own Lost and Found boxes in the classrooms. Cafeterias are also known to have Lost and Found boxes. Again, my professional advice would be to avoid both the locker room and cafeteria Lost and Founds, unless of course you are looking for a library book or last week’s homework.

Lost and Found can be the source for stretching limited resources for extracurricular activities. Many a costume for drama productions has been culled from this source. In fact, I know one creative high school senior who recently needed multiple red skirts for a performance. A trip to Lost and Found yielded several red T-shirts that had not been claimed for more than two months. Those T-shirts became a set of matching red skirts, and the show went on.

If a Lost and Found item has a name printed in it, on it or attached to it, the lost object has a very good chance of being returned to its owner. Unfortunately, the majority of items aren’t labeled with names. Now, I’m not saying that parents need to label every last sock, but the big or necessary items should be labeled. A permanent marker is all that’s needed to label the inside of backpacks, lunchboxes, snow pants, coats, mittens and gloves.

Parents also can help teachers by reinforcing the habits of turning snow pants right side out, hanging coats and snow pants up, placing mittens and hats on a shelf, zipping backpacks up so the contents don’t fall out, and neatly placing the boots next to each other with their toes touching the wall. Grown-ups also need to remember that the likelihood of this happening consistently for any child in kindergarten through grade 12 is practically nil. And so, we need Lost and Found.

Remember to stop by your child’s school, even the middle and high schools, to look for that other right boot.

What’s the most unusual item that you saw in a school Lost and Found? What were you amazed to recover in Lost and Found? Write me at: conversationswithateacher@gmail.com.