Do you label your children's school uniform, and if not why?

[ItWasnaMeGuv]

I ask because after more than 20 years working as an assistant in primary schools, still we end up with mounds of lost property which is not labelled and never, ever claimed [and frustrated emoticon].

When we find labelled items we can get them returned to their owners straight away, which is lovely. Sometimes items are clearly expensive, coats for example. I am always astounded that items like this are not claimed.

I know with my own kids, everything was labelled as I couldn't afford to keep buying replacements. I would be interested to know if there are any mumsnetters who do not label school uniforms. Why not? It is really helpful, to everyone.

I loving labelled everything for a couple of years including shoes and water bottles. Year 7 starts tomorrow and I have written DDs name in biro on the blazer label. Things didn't tend to get lost much at primary as it was a very small school and all the children seemed to help to look after everyone's belongings, my child included. It was very sweet to see them say, "Oh look that's x's jumper from year 3, I'll pop take it round to his mummy before they go home."

Heaven help us tomorrow. 😱

I bet the same parents who don't label their kids uniforms are the same people who don't label clothes of their relatives in care homes.

And later are kicking a fuss why Aunt Bessy is missing lots of jumpers and skirts etc

The children are usually very good at sniffing a “lost” jumper and identifying who it belongs to😳

Sell it second hand.

Last school I worked it nobody would take free uniform. Didn’t need charity and would be insulted if you offered them any

Sell “pre-loved” uniform as part of the schools aim of being eco friendly and it was like a stampede to the stall…

I used to write DSs name on his labels. At primary he didn’t have a uniform, so there was never the issue of lots of identical jumpers. He never left anything lying around so I never had to rummage through lost property. Now he is in secondary and does have a uniform, but I don’t bother writing his name anymore as he never loses things.
His dad is the same, they just seem to have a gene where they are very vigilant about their property. I however, do not have that gene. I returned to school today to find 2 pairs of sandals in my office that I hadn’t even noticed I was missing!

It does shock me how quickly our lost property at school fills up, and no matter how many reminders we send out, the majority of it is unnamed.

I label everything, down to shoes and bags. SHEIN do about 200 stick on labels for £3. Even when I wash their clothes, the label doesn’t come off. We often find the clothes we lose, so labelling has been successful for us.

Except for one time my son lost his Nike cap. That was labelled, but never returned. We learnt our lesson not to send in brand name items to school.

When DD1 was in Y7, a girl lost a shoe after drama. Somewhere in that class, a kid went home in shoes of two different sizes. Not only did they not realise, that shoe was never returned.

That is my favourite lost property story. Labelling is useless in the face of that kind of behaviour.

All my kids’ clothes were labelled when they were at primary school although the younger ones often had their older sibling’s name on (same surname). For secondary, I tend to label jumpers, blazers and any PE kit with the school logo as they will look indistinguishable from anyone else’s otherwise and they’re more expensive to replace. But not generic uniform like shirts, trousers, skirts, socks etc as they should be able to look after and identify their own by this age.

Mine have left school but yes I used to. Iron on labels and then I went to Stick ins

It’s not up to the school to look for lost items.
They have enough to do.

Honestly that would annoy me. I iron on name labels to the care labels - you might not notice them immediately but if it was found and you looked for a name you would. If you wrote with a Sharpie on my kids clothes it makes them less nice for passing down, to my mind.

It's pretty easy to spot name labels, yours would have been seen and therefore I wouldn't have had to resort to writing your child's name on their jumper label.

It isn't people like you who I had to label jumpers on behalf of.

I bought 12 dozen sew in labels for each of mine and they lasted their school lives, I cut them out too sometimes. Dc2 used the remainder for their navy sports kit!

We’ve had lots of stuff returned with labels on so I will continue to do this! Plus there have been two occasions where I have found someone else’s property out and about on walks and returned it to school for them!

I lable everything that DD might take off (coat, jumper, water bottle etc), but I'm pretty lax about trousers and polo's, as she is very unlikely to take them off, and even if she did it would be obvious which child isn't wearing trousers. Pre-covid, when they changed for pe everything got labled.

As a slight defence of my lazy aproch, iron on labels seem to caurse sensory issues and I don't like permanent marker, as we tend to pash stuff on. The things that do get labled have sew in one's, but it does take a while to do every polo.

I use stickers and get everything back eventually.

I don't expect things to be 'returned' though - I get my kid to look or I go look in lost property.

I do but it’s pointless as lost property is a black hole that no one is allowed to access (until they flog it on the playground at the end of term fete) and things are never returned…

You know you can peel stickers off 😂

Why is no one allowed to access it?

Can someone please enlighten me whether sew-in labels are really better than writing it in biro on the clothing label? Most things this year even had a little ‘name’ line. Last year when DS started in reception I invested in one of those name stamps because the school recommended it, but it was rubbish - barely printed and faded fast anyway. So this year I’ve gone for biro - am I committing a parenting faux pas? I’m not fast at sewing so sewing labels into every item would take longer than I can face, and I remember the iron-on ones being rubbish when I was a kid.

Writing it in pen was so easy I’m wondering if I’m missing something.

Last year I did, for Reception.

This year I'm only planning to label stuff that DC's actually likely to remove, ie coat, jumper, cardigan, wellies, hat, gloves.

Last year I used iron on labels but they came off in the wash, so I reverted to marker pen.

I once lost a bag of textbooks in year 7. My Mum was so angry because they were expensive to replace. I looked for them everywhere and concluded that I must have lost them on the bus.

They turned up at school in the lost property cupboard... When I was in year 11. No idea where they'd been all those years!

I do (did) but drew the line at socks!

My two have had Stikins in and on virtually everything. Back in junior school DS had a brand new blazer go astray and turn up on another boy. A new name tape had been put in at the back of the neck over our one, but they hadn’t noticed my second Stikin on the inside label. We got the blazer back. Happy days.

Stick on labels work best, I use My Name Tags. You can put them on clothes, shoes, water bottles, lunch boxes etc.
I just do surname and have stuff than belonged to my 13 year old still used by my 8 year old with sticker in tact.