LOL, me too!
Right-hand work gloves. No matter what specific type or brand, when I have a pair of matching gloves, it is a most temporary condition. The norm is to have a stack of left-hand gloves and no right hand in sight, other than perhaps some ancient one with holes in all the fingers.
My wife always says, “that’s because you’re right handed.” Huh? What does she think I do? Go running out to split wood or shovel snow or scrape paint or whatever with just one hand, leaving the left hand bare and the left glove inside?
And it’s not like the right-hand glove gets significantly more wear. Even if it did, I’d still have a PAIR of gloves! One a bit more ragged, perhaps, but a set nonetheless.
But no, the right gloves are consistently falling through that hypothesized space warp, or possibly being stolen by Thing in the Addams Family.
Pretty much what’s already been listed… pens (especially my beloved Pilot G-2s), tape, scissors, batteries, screwdrivers, notepads.
For people who live with spouses or kids I can sure see how this becomes a problem.
What confuses me are people living alone who lose things. Especially those who live in small quarters (like me) who simply don’t have 10 rooms, a garage, a basement, and a shed in which to lose their whatevers.
e.g.
My pens: they all live in a dedicated cup on the desk. Take one from the cup, write with it, and put it back. Ditto pencils. And anything pen-like, such as a Sharpie or highlighter. One cup one place.
My scissors: Two general purpose pairs, identical Fiskars. One in a drawer of kitchen utensils. It’s for opening food packages, trimming flower stems, and very occasionally cutting actual food. One in a caddy on the desk. It’s for general cutting duty around the house, but mostly opening mailings and cutting paper. One fingernail scissors stored in the toiletry tool caddy in the bathroom along with nail files, tweezers, toothbrush, etc.
ISTM most of “I can’t find it” comes from not having a fixed and consciously chosen logical-to-you place to store “it”. And a lack of discipline to put stuff away promptly when done with it. Again assuming you live alone. If not, then your stuff will only be as organized as the least-organized member of your household. Who may well be chaotic evil. Unless you get locking cabinets for your special-enough stuff. Just sayin’.
When I was young, I listened to the “Devil rock and roll” on my little 9-volt battery transistor radio. I often fell asleep listening in bed, so you can imagine how long a battery lasted. We didn’t have rechargeables and my mother sure wasn’t going to take me to the store just to buy a 9-volt battery…which cost about half my weekly allowance anyway. This, of course, warped my young personality.
Now, at 70+, I am fanatically devoted to having batteries of ALL types always at hand. I also have dozens and dozens of flashlights available. I keep 9-volts, AAs, AAAs, Cs, Ds, and button types stocked and centrally located. I have multiple chargers because I keep dozens of AAs and AAAs in rotation. I have chargers that will work off of my car’s lighter adapter. My wife thinks it’s hilarious…until she needs a CR2016 battery or wants a flashlight.
“As God is my witness, I’ll never be batteryless again!”
It always used to be my keys. Coming in to the house I would absent-mindedly drop them somewhere. Getting ready to go out again later there would be the furious search in all the likely places…
I finally got it pounded into my head to keep them in my right hand trouser pocket AND NOWHERE ELSE, ever….
If you include the garage, good luck corralling a 10mm socket:
My late husband’s cousin was married to a guy whom she described as having come from a battery-deprived childhood, so he always had tons of batteries and backups, too.
That you, Ron?
Ahhhh…keys. ThelmaLou has this one licked (said with great smugness).
I favor Baggallini handbags and many of them come with a “leash” for your keys. A nylon cord about a foot long with a hook/clip on each end. One end hooks to the key ring and the other end hooks to your purse. My keys are ALWAYS attached by this leash to whatever bag I’m currently carrying (not always a Baggallini). ALWAYS. I never set my keys down on anything like a table or counter. They live in my bag. On their leash.
I have an extra car key (fob) that I leave at a garage or someplace when someone is working on the car.
The leash is long enough that I can use the key without unhooking it. And I can reach in my bag and find the spot where the leash is attached to the bag and pull on it to locate the business end where the key is. Hehe.
[shakes fist] Take that, you demon key elves!
Off the top of my head:
- Sunglasses
- Reading glasses
- Guitar picks
- Charger / adapter cords
- Mini flashlights
- Chapstick
- Gloves of all varieties (work, snow)
My solution for this, when it is little things, is just keep buying more. Eventually the odd places stuff disappear to reaches a saturation point, and then I can find stuff again.
That tactic worked great with binder clips (one of my favorite kitchen tools). Every time I took the last one out of the drawer, I bought another box. Eventually I never took the last one, because I could return them to the drawer at the rate I used them.
I assume we have office squirrels or something, because I still find little caches of them all over the house. I always return them to the drawer, but the caches just reappear.
“Seen my glasses?”
Wife: “On top of your head!”
You haven’t done that quite right until you’ve taken your glasses off your nose and moved them up on top of your head. And thereby dislodged the pair already up there.
Don’t ask how I know this. 
I am generally disorganized and live amongst clutter, and yet, oddly enough, the answer to the question is “no”. or at least, very rarely can I not find something. There appears to be some underlying order to the seemingly random clutter. Some things may live in strange places, but they’re always in that same strange place.
The one example of a thing that is usually in a predictable place that I couldn’t find was a beautifully finished sommelier-style stainless steel corkscrew that I quite valued. The search for it was intensive. I eventually found it underneath the fridge. How it got there I have no idea but I’m pretty sure that alcohol was involved.
Right handed garden gloves. I have a box full of left handed gloves but their mates are nowhere to be found.
Sorry@nyvaakI should have read the thread before creating my post.
I had a standard place for four pairs of scissors in out dining room/kitchen and would move them there whenever I found them out of place. But wife uses them and leaves them wherever. Finally I took one and hid it in the kitchen where only I knew and I an always careful to replace it there. I found another one two days ago and put it where it belongs and it has already disappeared.
Nope. I’m just glad to hear I’m not the only one.
They are small, compact, and for their size, are heavy. They are always going to be on the bottom of something.
I finally got sick of this, and got a lot of drawers and boxes, and it always looks like we are in the middle of packing, but as long as I bully the two gigantic men I live with into putting things in the right box, we are good.
I was a bit shocked to see the multiples we had of some items. We’d done the “can’t find it; looked long enough; fuck it, buy another” many times for many things. Including, apparently, wireless computer mouses and Locktite. Had a fun time matching up mouses and USB devices.
But, made the best of it: in “tools” there’s a pair of scissors, in “office supplies,” there’s another one, and yet another in “crafts.” When I was sorting, there were lots of scissors. There are several pairs in crafts, actually-- different sizes. And a couple of sizes in “sewing/mending”-- which has the little bottle of Fabric Fusion we had; the big bottle is in “crafts.”
I put a set of drawers, some cups, a Sharpie and tape for labeling, and everything from the boychik’s bathroom, plus a few things he didn’t have but seems to be asking for a lot (or just filching from my bathroom), and said “Set it up however you want.” He asked for one thing: a paper towel dispenser and some towels, and so we got that, even though we are trying to use less disposables these days.
The boychik actually does a very good job of keeping his bathroom clean. For a teenage boy, he does a remarkable job.
Trying to figure out a way to declutter while still keeping everything in the drawers and boxes. It’s working so far. Basically, you can get what you need momentarily from a box or drawer, and return it to the same one, or take the whole box or drawer some place, and just put it back with everything in it when you are done.
This is how I solved the “disappearing screwdriver” problem. I used to have one big toolbox with all my hand tools. But (after my kids got older) I started to discover that several of my basic screwdrivers, pliers, and other everyday hand tools weren’t in the box when I needed them, because they’d be borrowed and not returned.
So I replaced the big toolbox with two small ones and a medium, and distributed the items according to frequency of use. Now my kids just grab one small (and light) toolbox, take it to the work location, and bring the whole box back.
When they’re older still, I’ll get them their own toolboxes and their own tools, and make mine off-limits. I haven’t done that yet because I don’t want the tools to live in their bedrooms and invite random usage out of boredom that requires me to fix things later. At this point, it still needs to be an active choice to retrieve the tools for a specific use.
We just moved. We had pros move the big stuff.
We used our two SUV’s to move out ‘little’ stuff. Now my wife was still working 100 miles away, I was working at the new house.
We would each make seperate trips. Each of us packing things.
I can’t find a thing.
But I did carve out a great place in the garage for my tools. I bought one of those big 10 drawer role around tool ‘box’ for my hand tools. I know where they are. That was a must. New homes=need tools.
I’m making split-pea soup last week.
Me: “Honey, where’s the potato peeler?”
Her: “ I couldn’t find it last week when I was making Shepherd’s Pie. It was just gone, so I bought another one.”
Me: “Where’s that one?”
Her: “Same place as the old one.”
Me: “No, it’s not.”
Her (after coming to the kitchen to look for herself)": “You’re right. It isn’t. I’ll order another one.”
We have no idea. Normally, I’d say that the fastest way to find something that’s been misplaced is to buy a replacement, but we haven’t seen anything at all of the two potato peelers so far. It’s been over a week.