The research isn’t promising. One study says we spend ten minutes every day rummaging for lost items from books to phones to car keys and even the cars themselves. Another claims we lose up to nine items every day, or 198,743 in a lifetime.
I once lost a set of keys in my house. I found them three years later as we were packing to move to a new house. Twice, I’ve bought Christmas cards on clearance after the holiday season, and put them in a “special place” for the following year. Both years, I couldn’t remember where I put them!
The Top 5 things people lose are their cell phone, keys, important papers, glasses and wallets/purses. Scroll further down the list and you’ll find debit cards, tablets, coats, and yes, cars! It’s just not fair–I’ve lost my keys and never found them; I’ve lost my sunglasses and never found them; but whenever I lose weight, I always manage to find it again!
I recently returned home from a business trip to learn that my youngest son had misplaced his brand new red sneakers. We turned our house upside-down looking for them. After days of searching, I had to break down and buy him a new pair. Meanwhile, my eldest son needed gym shorts because he was getting marked down in his gym class for wearing inappropriate attire. As I stood at the cash register shelling out a bunch of cash just a few weeks after our Back-to-School shopping, I couldn’t help but think of this story:
A teenager lost a contact lens while playing basketball in his driveway. After a brief, fruitless search, he gave up. His mother took up the cause and within minutes, she found the lens.
“How did you do that, Mom?” asked her teenage son.
“We weren’t looking for the same thing,” she explained. “You were looking for a small piece of plastic. I was looking for $150.”
