When your apartment has seemingly swallowed one of your possessions — your keys, say — without a trace, there are a few strategies people tend to fall back on: Look in the last place you had them. Look in the last place you’d ever expect to find them.
Neither of these, as you probably know from experience, is particularly useful. If you knew the last place you had them, well, you’d still have them. And unless you’ve found some weirdly creative uses for your keys, they probably aren’t hiding in the shower or the vegetable drawer. But new research does offer one tip that might actually work: Focus your hunt on where the mess is.
“If you’re looking for your keys you should focus on the areas with the most clutter, because if they were somewhat more obvious, you would have found them by now.” You may get lucky and spot them out of the corner of your eye, just lying on the floor or something, but odds are you’re going to have to get your hands dirty: the laundry piles, the mounds of junk that have amassed on all your surfaces. At least it’s better to know from the get-go that this won’t be fun.
- Where are the weirdest places you’ve lost/found your keys?
Link: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/02/a-better-strategy-for-finding-your-missing-keys.html