Lost Items : 2 Different Approaches to Find Them
Everybody knows the feeling of not being able to find something that was JUST there.
Losing things, and spending the next 3 to 5 minutes anxiously trying to find what we lost is a pretty common experience for most people. We all lose things–most of the time we search for something for 5 minutes until we either find them or stop looking for it because it’s not that important at the moment.
No matter who we are, how we live, or where we live, we lose stuff all the same. The top 5 lost items in the US and UK are really similar.
In the US the top 5 most commonly lost items are as follows: TV remotes, phones, car & house keys, glasses, wallets, and bags.
And in the UK the top 5 items are: Keys, phone, pens (or other items of stationery), glasses or sunglasses, remote controls.
As we can see, it’s almost the same with little differences. We mostly lose things that we use in our everyday lives, like keys, remotes, phones, or glasses. It’s not that surprising that we lose stuff that we carry with us everywhere. It makes sense that I lost my phone that I use daily, and not that one book on the shelf that I read once and left on the shelf, never to touch it again.
If you’re someone who loses stuff easily, don’t feel bad, because losing stuff is a sign that you have a lot on your mind, or that you’re busy, or something just slipped from your mind while you were multitasking.
One of the best approaches to finding your lost items is to retrace your steps, as suggested by Irene Kan, a professor of psychology. She says that forming a mental image of what you were doing when you last saw the item makes it much easier to find said lost item.
Another thing that can be done is organized searching. Michael Solomon, who wrote the book How to Find Lost Objects, says that “There are no missing objects. Only unsystematic searchers.” He also suggests that objects are “apt to wander” but they never travel “more than 18 inches from their original location.”
I told you about how to find stuff that you lose, but I also have to tell you how NOT to find your items (in case you’re trying to hide something!). One of the best ways to never find the thing you lost is to panic and make a mess.
In an article by Marian Keyes, she talks about her adventure with losing her passport right before an important trip. The first thing she does is to take out every drawer and search the contents, this could have been a good way if not for her describing her apartment as a “bomb-site” after the search–oopsies.
But we can all learn from her mistakes, she teaches us that we don’t always need to find our lost items, we can just… REPLACE THEM!
Study Reveals The Most Common Items that Go Missing at Home | Apartment Therapy
