We’ve all been there. You’re just about to leave the house, you put your shoes on and reach for the door handle when you realize that you’re missing your keys. You start searching the most obvious places first: your pockets, your bag and the few spots around the house where you usually keep them. Nada! Your keys might as well have left the face of the Earth because you can’t see a single trace of them anywhere.

Yet, this keeps happening more often than we think. On average, people misplace about nine items a day and spend over 15 minutes searching for them (keys being one of the most commonly lost items). That can easily turn into a mountain of wasted time just searching for lost things. In psychology, interference theory offers some explanation as to why this might be happening. Memories are transient and change as time passes. If we have two or three similar memories that are close to each other, they can interfere with one another and our memory of what has happened can be impaired. In the case of your keys, if you don’t have a designated spot in the house for storing them, you can keep going between the different places you think you last saw them without any certainty that you’re right.

Luckily, there are things you can do to make this happen less often or to stop it from happening altogether. Implement them right and you’ll never have to worry about losing your keys again.

It might sound like an obvious one, but you’d be surprised how many people either don’t have one or don’t use the one they have. This is, by far, the biggest cause for losing keys and spending countless hours searching for them. That not only causes frustration, but it can also lead to a disruption to your work and private life if you’re often late at the office or for meeting with friends. So, take a moment and decide what’s the best spot in the house where you’ll be storing your keys from now on. Make sure the place is easily accessible so that you have the incentive to use it and that you can easily grab the keys if you’re in a rush. A small container on your shoe cabinet or a “key slot” on your coat rack can be an ideal place for this.

While having all your keys in the same place is convenient, it’s also a recipe for disaster if you don’t have a backup plan. Always make at least one more copy of your keys in case you lose the originals. A hidden place in your car is a great spot for storing your extra copies as it can help you avoid getting locked out of your house (just make sure you don’t have your street and house number on them in case someone else gets a hold of them). You can store another copy in your suitcase if you happen to travel frequently or use an empty shelf in your wardrobe where you know you can always find them.

You know how you sometimes go into the kitchen and you forget why you went there? Then you backtrack your steps to the dining room where you first got the idea to go into the kitchen and there you see your plate and knife and realize you are missing a fork? That’s the power of mental cues. In the case of your lost keys, you can try going back through the steps you took until the last time you remember having your keys. Try thinking of the order in which things happened. Perhaps you came through the door and realized you’ve left the hob in the kitchen and you hurried to turn it off. Then your phone rang and your colleague asked you to open your laptop and send them that last presentation you’d been working on. Then you quickly jumped in the shower before you got ready for dinner. All these actions can offer a cue as to where your keys might be. Make sure you actually go through the different rooms as you try to remember because something in the environment might give you a clue as to where you might have left your keys.

Losing keys is one of the most common, yet most frustrating things in the world. It has happened to all of us and it will probably keep happening as our lives get busier and busier. However, with a little bit of proactiveness on your end, you can remove this problem from your life so that you save your energy for other, more important things that truly matter to you. If you’d like to learn more about Spotypal and how it works, please give us a call and one of our team members can help you get started.