Where are those darn keys? Tricks for remembering where you put things

“Where are those darn keys? I just had them!” If you find yourself losing things often, there are strategies for how to stop.

Daniel L. Schacter, a psychology professor at Harvard University and author of “The Seven Sins of Memory,” says losing things is often a problem of attention more than a problem of memory. For things you use regularly, he says, create a system and practice doing it. For instance, make a habit of always placing the keys and wallet in the bowl by the door. And for things you don’t use as often, try elaborating on the memory of where you put them and say it out loud. More detail helps encode the memory.

In winter, there are simply more things to lose — think scarves, hats, gloves. That’s not counting your misplaced keys at home or those exasperated moments looking for your phone when you say, “I just had it!”

Try not to beat yourself up. Even Mark McDaniel, who has been studying human memory and learning for almost 50 years, left a hat under his chair recently at a restaurant. He doesn’t usually wear hats, so he forgot it.

“I should know how to remember to remember, but at the moment, you don’t think you’re going to forget,” said McDaniel, professor emeritus of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Luckily, there are strategies. If you can remember to implement them, here’s how to stop losing things.

Schacter said losing things is something everyone is prone to, to varying degrees. It depends on life circumstances that pull the mind away from the present.

Memory occurs in three phases in the brain: encoding, storage and retrieval. Schacter likened losing keys to drivers who arrive at their destination safely without remembering how they got there.

In both cases, the memory of the action is not encoded because people were thinking of something else, which makes it harder to retrieve the memory later.

“You have to do a little bit of cognitive work,” said Schacter. “At the time of encoding, you have to focus your attention.”

It helps to not have to remember where some things are.

Schacter suggested identifying problem items such as your phone, wallet or keys and creating a structure that becomes automatic with practice. He always leaves his reading glasses in a specific spot in the kitchen. When he goes golfing, his phone always goes into the same pocket in his golf bag.

If there is a noticeable increase in losing things compared to the recent past, accompanied by other memory problems that interfere with your normal function, it might be time to see a doctor, Schacter said.

McDaniel said that the brain does a better job at remembering things when it receives several bits of information that can later be connected. Among memory researchers, it’s known as elaboration.

One way to stop losing objects you don’t habitually use — but often lose, like a hat — is to say out loud where you put it when you put it down. Verbalizing does two things that help with retrieval.

“Saying it out loud creates a better encoding because it makes you pay attention, and the verbalization creates a richer memory,” McDaniel said.

The more detailed the elaboration, the more connections in the brain there will be to help you remember.

For something like your hat, imagine it in the location and connect it to a reason and a consequence: “I put my hat under the chair because I didn’t want to get it dirty on the table, but I left it behind last time.”