In my apartment there are two place where I doff footwear, by my recliner, and at the foot of the bed. Couple of days ago I wanted to wear my Tevas and I grabbed one sandal by my chair and looked for the other. Nowhere to be seen. I would never knowingly separate them. After scouring the apartment, I decided to look in the car. It was possible I had been driving barefoot, and then when I went to go in, I just grabbed the one. So I went out to the car, and found a single sandal. Pairing it with the one I had, I found I have two sandals for the right foot! I had been mixing and matching old Tevas, but the spares are missing too!
I thought this was going to be about strange things discovered in ‘lost and found’ boxes, so I was (and am) going to tell the story of what I found when I worked at a fitness center in my early 20s. I and another worker there on the evening shift used to have our friends come over and hang out after hours.
One time somebody took out the lost and found box, and inside was a Kit Kat clock, still in its original box. We took it out, took down a picture on an office wall, hung it up on the nail and plugged it in. If you’ve never seen a Kit Kat clock in action, the eyes and tail go back and forth in opposite directions. We got a good laugh out of that. Who shows up at a fitness center for a workout and brings a Kit Kat clock with them?
We accidentally left it up on the wall, and my boss (and owner of the place) found it the next morning. Fortunately he was a nice guy with a good sense of humor, and we didn’t get into trouble.
Months later when it still hadn’t been claimed I snagged it, and it hung proudly on my wall for years.
Blame the cats. If you don’t have cats, blame the dogs. If you don’t have dogs, well, … it’s either drugs or senility, so pick your poison. 
As somebody with neither cats nor dogs (nor kids), I’m stuck with those last two possibilities myself. The funny thing is that when I do finally find the [whatever] in its unexpected hiding place, I can sorta remember how that happened, carrying it from here to there when it got set down along the way for Squirrel! and then instantly evaporated from my non-memory.
My lost but not found story is a sorta mix of my loss and other’s not-founds. But not as cool as a Kit Kat clock.
A few months ago I was paying the bill late at night at a bar & grill when I juggled my dark gray credit card, dropped it, and it disappeared, probably sliding under one of the fixed booths. I came back the next day on the off chance they’d found it once they’d turned the lights on at the end of the night to mop up.
Talked to the afternoon bartender who lifted the cash tray out of the register’s drawer and there must have been 50 lost credit cards laying there. Mine was not among them. Sigh. But 50! Wow I never expected that.
Of course the place had been open for many years and I doubt anyone who works there ever thought to go through the drawer periodically and pitch some of old ones. Easier to ignore the problem until the pile is so tall they can’t fit the cash tray in and still close the drawer.
Your missing sandals are hiding out with a stash of wandering socks. Find the socks and you’ll find the sandals.
Kit Kat clocks are great. I’ve had one for at least 30 years, on the wall, wagging away. Don’t get the battery powered ones, they’re crap.
I think socks go over the top of the washer tub, and end up between the tub and the tub case. Unless it brakes, no one ever goes in there. And my Maytag is 30+ years old. Never had a repair. Will I ever see my socks again?
We got lots. We moved after 33 years in the same house. Some stuff is lost. All mine.
My wife donated a box of stuff. Stuff that should have been moved, not donated.
I hope someone is enjoying my Kindle (I deactivated it). My magnifying glass, which was an heirloom (to me anyway). My jewlers loop. My exacto-knife set. Missing a space heater as well.
Oh well. No big deal really. What we found was a new house that we both love. It was a big change for us but is working out great.
I lost a pan. For cooking. I had one high-sided almost wok like pan that I really liked, so I bought a second one, so I could cook with one while the other was in the dishwasher, or something.
But then the new one just went missing. I live alone! Where did it go?
But I was also in the process of selling my house around that time. I figured it got put away somewhere odd, and would turn up again on moving day. But no, it was nowhere to be found. The house was completely empty, and all the other kitchen stuff made it to my new place, but not that one pan…
I think that the real explanation for socks is that people throw them away.
See, it starts off simple enough: One gets kicked under the bed or dropped on the laundry room floor, or the like: A perfectly ordinary, and perfectly temporary, place for a sock to get lost. Then people go through their socks, and find the odd one. Huh, the other must have gotten lost. Well, one sock of a pair isn’t any good, so it gets tossed. Then, inevitably, the other one turns up, and the same thing happens.
Sort of a Romeo-and-Juliet thing.
One spring, I bought a really nice pair of knee-high boots that were on sale. That fall, when I was ready to wear them, they were nowhere to be found. And this was not something small that could get tucked away somewhere. They were in a pretty big box. I searched multiple times for them. Ten years later, they have still not shown up.
Several times a year I go up to Chicago for conventions, and stay at a friend’s house for a few days. I wear several rings, and a few years ago when I started losing weight I started having trouble with the rings being loose and sliding off my fingers. During one trip one of them slipped off without me noticing it, and I wasn’t sure if it had happened while I was at the convention or at my friend’s house. I contacted both the hotel and the convention to see if it had turned up in either’s lost and found, and also asked my friend to keep an eye out for it. Several months later she called me to let me know that she had caught one of her cats batting it around in the bedroom.
Now you tell me.
I have a box on top of the washer where I put single socks. It has worked twice when the missing sock was teleported back into the washer.
Afa socks go, I have a found thing without the lost part. I must have a dozen of those tiny socks, I guess for kids. They show up in my laundry after I get home. I use the apt complex laundry room, and I never see these tiny socks when filling the washer or when filling the drier.
I find the missing sock problem much easier to handle when I have a dozen pairs (more or less) of the same kind. Start with 24 sox, and buy more when I’m down to about 8.
Yeah, me too. Laundry day got a little bit easier for me after I started buying my socks at Costco!
I have more than one kind of sock. But they’re very obviously different: white, black, or brown vs short or long. Within any size / color combo they’re all the same thing.
I can attest to that. I got one of the battery powered ones as a gift a few years ago. Even when new it did not keep time well at all. Now something seems to have gone wrong with it, and it doesn’t wag anymore even with fresh batteries.
Somehow every time I read these posts about clocks my mind goes to “KitKat Club”. Which are various real or fictional “gentlemen’s” clubs around the world of varying degree of outragousness or fetishness or …
I’ve never been in a club of that name, but after the candy bar, the club is the next thing that “KitKat” calls to mind.
Carry on. 
I can’t remember where I first heard this, but a character is wearing mismatched socks and someone calls them out for it. The comeback was “Yeah, and I have an identical pair at home”.
Reminds me of Bill Cosby bit from before The Fall. Paraphrasing mightily:
I had to go to work early one day. So getting dressed quietly in the dark to not disturb my wife.
Have you ever tried to feel the difference between a black and brown sock?
My late wife enjoyed crazy patterned & colored socks and especially mismatched pairs of them. So silly.
Mismatched sox were her norm for many years.