Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Where to Return Lost Items

If you feel like doing a good deed today, here's where you can return a Lost Item in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

If you’ve been playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons for a while now, you may have stumbled across a small bag or book on the ground, this is called a Lost Item. As the name implies, it’s an item that has been accidentally dropped by another villager and needs to be returned. So if you’d like to do your good deed for the day, here’s where to return lost items in New Horizons.

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons: How to Return Lost Items

If you’ve stumbled across a Lost Item recently, you might find yourself wondering what you should do with it. You have two options: Return it or do nothing. If you choose to return it, once you find the right villager you’ll be rewarded for your troubles. If you decide to do nothing, you can simply let it expire in your inventory and then get rid of it the next day. To start, let’s assume you want to return the lost item.

Luckily, it’s super simple and won’t take long at all. To return a lost item in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, simply follow the steps below:

  1. Pick up the lost item
  2. Speak to any villager
  3. Select “You lose this item?”
  4. Select the Lost Item from your inventory
  5. The villager will either say yes or tell you who the item belongs to
  6. If it doesn’t belong to them, find the villager that they mentioned
  7. Speak to them and select “You lose this item?”
  8. Select the Lost Item from your inventory
  9. Press A to return it to the villager

As you can see, the process of returning a lost item is pretty simple and will only take a few minutes. In exchange for your good deed, the owner of the Lost Item will give you a reward, which will most likely be a piece of clothing or some type of furniture. Which seems like a pretty good reward, to be honest. If you don’t like the item or don’t have a need for it, you can always sell it off for some extra Bells!

However, if you’re not feeling up to a good deed today, you won’t be punished for not returning the item. If you want to get rid of it, simply wait until the next day and then check your inventory. Instead of saying “Lost Item” it’ll say “What was this again?” To get rid of it, head to Nook’s Cranny and drop it in the trash. 

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Need some help catching sharks? Be sure to check out our video guide to learn how to catch every kind of shark in New Horizons:

After you’ve finished returning (or not returning) the Lost Item to its rightful owner, be sure to check out some of our other New Horizons coverage. Below you’ll find a few of our recent guides below:

What’s the best reward you’ve gotten for returning a Lost Item? Head on over to our Twitter or Facebook and let us know!

About the Author

Andrew Smith

Andrew Smith is a Guides Writer at Prima Games. Previously he has worked with IGN, GameSpot, and a handful of other great outlets. When Andrew isn't writing up game guides, you kind find him playing single-player, narrative-driven games. Wanna say hi? You can email Andrew at [email protected]