How to find something lost......

[Jim_Rogers]

Go to the store and buy a new one.

I was searching for a trailer hitch set up I knew I had.

I looked all over for it.

Went to the store and bought one.

Then this happened:


 

I had opened the package on the ball and installed it on the new tongue before I found my lost one.

So, now I have two.

Jim Rogers

[SawyerTed]

Mr. Murphy at his best!  

[Tom King]

That's my method too.  When I'm looking for a place to put the new one, there is the missing one.

[Magicman]

Ask your wife where it is.

Men can't find stuff because it is lost.  No one can find anything that is lost because it is lost.

Women can find stuff because they know that it is there.

[TroyC]

I always find lost stuff in the last place I look. Just need to learn how look in the last place first..... :D

[Onthesauk]

Pickles cartoons have addressed this the last 3 days!

[moodnacreek]

Some things I have 3 of.

[Old Greenhorn]

Some things I have 6 of and I still can't lay my hands on it when I need it. I buy a tape measure about every time I go to the store and see a cheap one or a deal on a nice one. I figure eventually there will be one every place I ever step. ;D But so far I find them in bunches of two and three. :D

[Southside]

Oh I have done the same thing multiple times.  The worst thing I have lost, didn't buy a replacement as I eventually found it, was my Lull....Wandering around the farm trying to remember where I parked it... :

[Nebraska]

I actually found something for a female two days ago.. One of the lady doctors couldn't find a tube of medication and I actually found it for her without asking one of the other office ladies where it was...(been in the same spot for 26 years that I know of).. but she couldn't   get her eye on it...Now has anyone seen the black stethoscope that hangs in the exam room........ : Kinda like Tom's tape measures...

[SawyerTed]

My son who is 33 lives around the corner.  He Is his father's son and has projects going about all the time.  

Of course I've told him if he needs something that's here to use it.  

Things disappear and reappear all the time.  The only problem is I'm not adjusted to his borrowing habits so when I can't find something I tend to replace it.  

Suddenly we have 5 chalk lines, 3 4' levels, what seems like 3 dozen tape measures, who knows how many speed squares, 2" hitches for a small fleet, enough extension cords for 3 crews and so forth.  

But I don't have to hunt for lost stuff so much.   :

[Sixacresand]

Two kinds of lost.  One is misplaced like tools hidden on a workbench.  The other is like when you lose your set of keys or cell phone while mowing grass or eye glasses come out of your pocket and fall in the lake.  

[Big_eddy]

Like when you drop that very special screw and it finds the very best hiding place in the entire shop? 

I may not know where it is, but I know lot of places it isn't. 

[SawyerTed]

That spot where special screws go should be full in my shop...but recent events confirm it must be bottomless.   >:(

[btulloh]

Like when you drop that very special screw and it finds the very best hiding place in the entire shop?

I may not know where it is, but I know lot of places it isn't.

That is absolutely true. 
A long time ago a friend of mine was sure that dropping a second screw and watching where it went would tell him where the first one was hiding. Uhhhhh . . . I think that just lead to losing a second screw in the other hiding place.  :-\

[Southside]

If it's a pointy screw just drive in a piece of equipment. Works for me every time, the screw ends up in a tire. 

[Resonator]

It doesn't bother me to purchase 2 or 3 tape measures, drills, sockets or whatever I need that I keep losing. I would rather do that than wasting time searching. Holding up work on a project, because I need a missing tool (especially when I'm billing by the hour). I've also learned I would rather work in my own shop, than work at a customer jobsite. Just because if I leave and come back, and the customer decides to "tidy up" and move tools, materials, etc., while I'm gone, it can become a search. :

[Big_eddy]

A long time ago a friend of mine was sure that dropping a second screw and watching where it went would tell him where the first one was hiding. Uhhhhh . . . I think that just lead to losing a second screw in the other hiding place.  :-\

If you really want a tough search, let the detent ball from a splitter valve escape. Spring loaded, they bounce and roll. And putting a zip lock bag over the valve for disassembly doesn't work. They blow right through it.  
I bought a bag full of spares after the last one hid. 

My true nemesis are pencils. I can easily lose 10 in a day. Fortunately a good friend gave me a whole box of golf pencils, so I just grab another. You'd think my shop floor would be littered with them, but they just vanish.

[thecfarm]

It's much easier to go buy another 45 minutes one way, then spend a ½ hour looking for the one you can't find.  :D  :
At least that's what I do. 

[Magicman]

 

 
This is my friend at the sawmill. 

Not necessarily what I may drop but sometime what the sawmill dropped while sawing.

[kelLOGg]

 

 

This is my best friend at the sawmill and in my shop. I prefer it to my metal detector if I am searching a small area for something that I most likely dropped and is not buried. But then, I rarely ever use it because I never lose anything. Has anyone seen my pliers? :D

[21incher]

I hate to admit it but I now say look in the freezer first. Right after my second covid shot I got bad brain fog and confusion that I still fight.  One day I couldn't find the keys to my truck and had no idea where I had left them. Wife and I spent hours searching the house, barn, and vehicles looking for them. Finally gave up and got the second set out then had copies of the house  keys made from my wife's set. A couple days later my wife was getting ice from the freezer over the fridge and there they were. Sitting half under a loaf of bread.  Since then when anything goes missing I look in the freezer first.

[Andries]

kelLOGg; the magnet on a string is a lifesaver when the truck keys get dropped in the snow. 
21incher: the magnet might work in the chest freezer too. 
:laugh:

[hedgerow]

Have a fair amount of trailers around the farm. I tried my best to keep a standard ball size and height to make it easier but over the years it didn't work out so each trailer has a reciever hitch laying on the trailer frame set up for that trailer. We have two inch and two five sixteen inch and pintal hitches around here.  Both pickups hitch heights are close. I also carry a three way ball in each pickup just in case. Never know when you might buy a trailer on the road.  I hate misplacing things too. 

[SawyerTed]

kelLOGg, a magnet like that is ever so useful for retrieving keys lost at the boat ramp or through a drainage grate!