Through her years as an elementary teacher and now a university professor in teacher education, the author has developed many creative writing instructional ideas for use with all learners (i.e., elementary through graduate level). Resourcefulness and imaginative thinking proves invaluable to teaching artists' pedagogy in current economic circumstances, where the challenge to optimize student learning with fewer available resources is an instructional reality. For her, effective instructional ideas can emerge from ordinary life experiences or at unexpected times. Mundane events can serve as inspirational catalysts and generate novel and creative teaching strategies. This article is a narrative about creative writing instructional ideas that were discovered and cultivated through lost, discarded, or forgotten items. All found objects share a commonality of being "discovered" as purposeful writing prompts, but they are distinctive in their generative properties and thereby incite a variety and range of writing skills and processes. (Contains 1 image.)