Lost & Found Solutions [MakerID-25]

At BPC, as much as the school is otherwise always clean and nice, the lost and found was dirty, and smelled terrible. It was impossible to find anything because all the clothes were piled on top of each other and no one wanted to look in it. For our Maker Faire project, we wanted to clean and reorganize the lost and found so that it would be more accessible for students and faculty.

Our inspiration was just the fact that making the lost and found cleaner and more accessible would help all the students in looking for their stuff. We ourselves were always intimidated to even look in the lost and found, so many people never got around to finding their clothes, let alone having all the effort to go digging through other people's clothes as well that have been there for weeks and probably months.

In order to clean up the lost and found, first we put out all the clothes in the yard so kids could take their jackets. We were really excited because we even had a friend that got three jackets that they had lost! So we got rid of as many clothes as we could, then measured the length of the top so we could install a PVC pipe to use as a hanger for clothes instead of just piling on the clothes. We did this by drilling a half circle into the sides of the ledge on the top inside of the shed.

We also installed a piece of wood near the bottom fourth of the shed to separate the clothes from the papers and water bottles, small things like that. We had trouble with this because we first measured the width incorrectly and had to re-cut the wood, but in this process, we learned how to use a jigsaw which was super cool.

We learned a lot of interesting things in the process of our project. We learned about drilling and sawing into different types of materials. As well as learning that if the clothes are all put out, kids are way more likely to collect all their stuff. If we had more time, then we wouldn’t have been as rushed and possibly had more time to explore different ways to modify the lost and found. We could have possibly built another small shelf next to the lost and found small things if we had more time. For anyone else in the future who is taking on the task of re-organizing their lost and found, make sure to get all the measurements right before you do any cutting it really helps.


Our project was completely free for us because we used resources that we already had at BPC.
How to use a jigsaw video