… or the house keys, or the keys to the executive washroom, or to that mysterious door in the attic where the strange noises… but I digress.
We’ve all spent way too much time looking for our keys. And we all know full well it’s an easily solved issue: * A place for everything and all that.* But do we?
In our current house and the last one, we had our key rack hanging just inside the house by the door to the garage. Kinda silly in our case, since it’s all but impossible for us to fit a car in the garage, so we never come in that way. However, we do make the effort to hang up our keys as soon as we come into the house. Oddly enough, they still migrate to pockets, purses, counter tops, under cushions…
So, where do you keep your keys? How disciplined are you about it? Where’s the weirdest place they’ve turned up?
I have a box that when I come in I put all my pocket change and my keys and my work id card. I pretty good at doing this but winter time makes it harder with all the extra pockets that winter coats have.
I have a set of round wicker baskets on my dresser, one gets keys, wallet, and quarters (laundry, you know), the other gets the cellphone, nickels&dimes, and receipts with pennies going into a big Absolut bottle.
I’ve left my keys in the door too… thankfully I’m in a small apt building so only my neighbor saw them the whole day.
This product may come in handy for those lost keys! (scroll about halfway down).
I have a table in my living room next to my computer. This is where I leave my keys. Ever since I developed the habit of always leaving them here I haven’t had to look for them elsewhere (which is certainly not fun when you have to leave for work and have no time to look, lest you be late).
At home I usually keep them in my car, in one of those odd little drawers they put in cars intended to hold god only knows what. My garage door is locked, so I don’t feel like the car is at risk.
But if I do bring them in, they end up in shoes(?!), the toy box, on top of the dryer, next to my PC, in my purse, in my coat pocket, or on the kitchen counter. And, on occation, they end up - on the key hook(?!). Perhaps needless to say, I keep several sets of keys available.
At work they go on my desk. Everywhere else in my coat pocket, except in summer, when they end up in my purse.
I lose my damn keys about once a month no matter how hard I try to always leave them in the same place.
I just found them yesterday (after being missing for a week) laying in the middle of the livingroom floor. My daughter and my wife both swear they did not plant them there.
I’m either the victim of a devious plot to drive me out of my mind or we have gremlins. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against gremlins, but they could at least kick in some rent!
Since college, I have kept my keys on a hook of some kind or other. Right now it’s one of those pseudo camping/mountain climbing hooks. I keep this attached to my purse. Works pretty well so far.
My wife has apparently been storing her car keys on the floor of my van for the past week or so. Fortunately she has several sets…
I just carry mine on me at all times, as my wife has this bizarre urge to lock the doors in hopes of preventing burglars from coming into our house in broad daylight and stealing all our fabric; so, I need to have my keys on me because she usually locks me out a couple times a month when I take out the trash or something like that.
I may be jinxing myself saying this, but I’ve misplaced my keys only once in the last five or six years, and that was at an Office Max where a kind stranger turned them in to their Lost and Found box. I recovered the keys about twenty minutes later. I’ve left them in the front door before, and they occasionally slip behind the television when I miss tossing them into the basket next to it (that holds keys, a few pairs of gloves, spare change, a minature lint brush, old transit cards, Mardi Gras beads, pens, and some lipsticks).
My mom keeps her keys on one of those plastic sproigy things that clip onto your purse handles. It’s available for easy access, which is great because she carries everything you could possibly imagine in her bag. Manicure set, sewing kit, inhaler, ibuprofen, Claritin, kleenex, a pocket Bible with daily devotional book, makeup bag (eyeshadow, blush, powder, lipstick, lipliner, eyeliner, mascara), lots of pens, notepads, a small scissors, mints, gum, various hard candies, dental floss, lotion, stain spray, photos of us and the dog, and a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember. For fun once she weighed her bag, and it topped the scales at about 15 pounds. But if you need anything, she’s got it. I should have her hold my keys.
Years ago when I lived in Coronado, CA, there was a large bush outside my apartment that picked my pocket. I locked up and left one afternoon, but when I got to my car, no keys!! I thought maybe I’d locked them inside the apt, so I managed to open the front window and climb in (What a safe apartment, huh?) I had a spare door key, but no spare car keys. It cost me $40 to have a locksmith make me another 2 sets. (A spare, you know.)
When I got home that evening, I brushed against the bush and heard the characteristic jingle of keys. I guess a branch snagged them out of my pocket. Never happened before or since.
I am also a “leave them in the door to be found by hubby when he gets home or when I have to let the dog out” person.
Usually I throw them on the dining room table… but occasionally they have managed to crawl under the scanner… on to the headboard… behind the toilet… in the bathroom sink… Heavens knows I would never put them THERE!
First thing I nailed to the wall in our new house was a key rack, right next to the door. I religiously hang my keys on it; my husband rarely, if ever, does. Nearly every time we head out, we spend a few minutes looking for where they could be. Strangest place I’ve found them (and it’s been more than once) was in the fridge - usually after going grocery shopping. I’ve also found them sitting on the roof of his car several times.
My keys are always in my left front pants pocket, along with my pocket knife, even when I’m bumming around the house in my shorts in the summer. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m paranoid about accidently locking myself out or just don’t want to risk misplacing them. Possibly the latter, because I once shared a townhouse with a friend who just dropped her keys on any available flat surface when she came in; the place was so cluttered that every time she went out she invariably had to spend half an hour searching for her keys first.
Spare sets of house and car keys are on a shelf in a cabinet near the front door, along with the garage door opener. Unless, of course, my wife forgets to put it back when she gets home.
Dining room table. Of course, this conveys a completely inaccurate impression, since it’s not really a dining room when you live in a studio apartment. But it’s easier than saying eating area table, especially since I almost always eat on the couch…
And there are times I launch myself further into my apartment before ridding myself of them, so they sit on the chest-of-drawers, or the desk. People who’ve watched me look for keys note that I usually pound the bed at some point, not only out of frustration but in the hopes of hearing a jangle from under the covers.
My keys are always kept in my purse - or whatever I am currently using as my purse, currently it’s actually a small backpack. For my housekeys, I have gotten into the habit of having a large, soft keychain on them - because it’s easy to find when I reach into my bag. Right now the keychain is a stuffed dolphin - before that it was Winnie the Pooh in a lion costume.
My spare keys are kept in a little painted tin on the ledge between my kitchen and my dining room.
I once got Mrs. Stof one of those “clap-twice-then-whistle” key-finders from Sharper Image. Worked wonders, though. By the time you’d gone through the house clap-clapping, you usually saw where you’d left the keys–though it did earn her the nickname “Rosie Palmer.”
About a week after we moved to South Carolina, we couldn’t find the damned things anywhere–clap, whistle, or slit open the sofa cushions. Turns out they were in a bag of moving debris (debris from moving, not that the stuff in the bag was moving) in the dumpster.
I’m sure the sight of me waist-deep in the dumpster clapping my hands made a great impression on the new neighbors.
My Perfect Child[sup]TM[/sup] has a massive key ring. Besides the key to her car (built into the door lock remote) and the house key, she has key rings attached to the key ring, 2 small clips, a photo key fob, and a huge lanyard she made from neon-colored shoe strings. And yet she still loses it. She has a wall-mounted basket just inside her bedroom where it’s supposed to go, but it doesn’t always work that way. One day we could not find her keys, so I gave her a set of spares, threatened her, and sent her off to work. When she got home and was getting ready for bed, she found her mega-key ring. It had fallen between the mattress and the footboard of her bed, muffled by a couple of blankets. Since that day, she’s been better about using the basket.
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