SOLVED. Children's Short Story (by Paul Jennings?) about a boy who keeps losing things and then eventually goes into an old manor and finds everything he's ever lost. Read around 2008-2009.

[Georgia]

One specific plot point I remember is that at the beginning of the story the protagonist is being forced to do a bully's homework (don't recall why exactly), and the bully's handwriting is so bad that he asks his little sister to write it out for him so it will look more like the bully wrote it, but his sister refuses and tells their mom that he's trying to get her to do his homework for him, so he resorts to writing it with his left (non-dominant) hand. Possibly the homework also gets lost and is one of the things he finds in the manor?

Read around 2008/2009. I had a couple of Paul Jennings collections (almost definitely Uncanny, Unreal, and Unbelievable), but I've checked all the short stories listed there and I can't find this particular one - it's possible this isn't his at all, but it certainly fits right in and I don't have any other ideas as to where it might be from.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[SBC]

Could it be the story "Loser" from the book Unexpected: 11 Mysterious Stories? I read this description on another thread: "The book Unexpected: 11 Mysterious Stories includes the short story Loser, by Peter Lerangis. It's about a boy with a near-supernatural knack for losing things. Eventually, he gets bullied into venturing into a mysterious house, thought to be haunted. It turns out that if you enter the house, you encounter an incarnation of your worst fear. The protagonist's worst fear is losing things, but he manages to face his fear, and is rewarded by being able to bring home everything he'd lost."

[Georgia]

YES, thank you so much!! That’s exactly it.

[SBC]

Oh great! I'm glad I could help. :)