Today, with almost zero ado, we’re going to talk about
HOW TO FIND AN OBJECT YOU’VE LOST IN YOUR HOME.
Never mind why.
Okay, obviously I’m writing this because I lost something. But according to studies, Americans spend 2 hours every week looking for missing items. That’s 100 hours per year. I’m constantly cleaning my house in order to cut down that number. I probably spend at least 3 ½ hours a week cleaning, just so I can cut down how much time we spend looking for things to a number that is unfortunately still not zero. And I’m still not happy about how clean the house is. So nobody wins. But at least the time isn’t spent muttering to myself about where things are. It’s spent muttering to myself about why people can’t put things where they go.
So here are some tips that we all use in the process of finding what we’re missing. I’m not sure exactly which tip is the instrumental factor here – we just do all these things, and then we find the missing item. I think we have to do all of them.
Ask yourself – is the item really that important? Because sometimes it is. Like a passport or a birth certificate, or your phone…
If it’s your phone, you can call it. Unless you don’t know your phone’s number, in which case you have to ask somebody you know to call it. But chances are you don’t know their number either without your phone.
You can’t call a passport or a birth certificate. And those are important, we decided. Everything major that you want to do in life, you need some small, important, ancient piece of paper. We’re living in an age where everything is on our phones, but if you want to drive, you need to carry a little card, and if you want to get that little card, you need to present a series of increasingly flimsy pieces of paper. You can’t just show them a picture of these papers on your phone. Your so-called “Social Security Card” is not a “card.” It’s more like a coupon. Your birth certificate is as old as you are, and for the first few years you had it, you were not responsible. Your passport at least they put in a book, like “You shouldn’t lose this.” And you do anyway.
With some items, though, I don’t specifically care if I get the item back. I have other pens, for example. I just want to know where they went, after all that looking. Where they disappeared to in one minute’s time. I didn’t get up, and I didn’t hear anything fall. Where is it? It’s the magic trick I didn’t ask for that I want the answer to.
Keep checking the same 3 places again and again. Maybe you looked for it wrong. And then come back and check again later, because maybe you really didn’t check thoroughly enough the second time either, even though when you came back to it, you said, “Maybe I looked for it wrong.” How many times are you going to check the same place without once looking well enough?
If what you lost is a passport, keep opening the passports you do have again and again in case they changed. Because they don’t write on the front of a passport whose passport it is. It’s a surprise every time you open it. And it’s not even on page one. You have to flip through the book to find the picture, which seems to be on a different page every time, like bentching is in a bentcher. Sometimes it’s at the beginning, and sometimes it’s at the end. In the same bentcher!
So you’re going to keep coming across the same passports, and going, “Let’s open this one again! Maybe it changed! Nope, wrong one!”
It’s like when your kid is missing a shoe, and everyone’s looking, and every time anyone comes across the one that’s not missing, their heart skips a beat.
“I think I found it!”
“No, that’s the other one.”
And then they move it somewhere new, so the next person can have the same reaction a minute from now.
Check the original place again. Like maybe all this looking was for nothing.
Also check your pockets a hundred times. Including pockets of garments you haven’t worn since before you lost the item. You never know. Sometimes you don’t think something is in your pocket, but then you check again and it is. No one knows how that works.
Say the same things over and over, like, “I feel like I’m going crazy!”
“It was just here.”
You can also say, “It has to be around here somewhere!” That way it knows. The world needs rules, and you’re setting them down – though a bit too late.
A nice side benefit of saying all these things is that everyone around you knows what you’re doing here. That way, they can help you look, despite being at a severe disadvantage in that they didn’t put it anywhere. Or maybe they did.
Others can help with a fresh set of eyes – especially if what you lost was your glasses.
Specifically, ask your spouse for help. A lot of times when you spend forever looking for something, your spouse will find it immediately. A little bit too suspiciously, if you ask me. But this is why you married them – they think differently.
There are two types of people – those who put things in the same place every time, and those who keep everything out so they can find it again. And they marry each other.
The reason they find it though – scientifically – is that they’re less emotionally invested in the item and can look at the situation more logically. In other words, they care less. Let that be a fun point of contention.
“I found it!”
“Wait, you don’t care that I lost it?”
“What?”
Assign blame. Make sure it’s clear whose fault it is that the item is missing before you find the item. This helps. If you can verify who’s at fault, then the item will find itself!
The item might reveal itself just to get you to stop.
Each of you should firmly believe – at least out loud – that the other is at fault. If the wrong person admits fault, then the wrong person is going to end up retracing their steps, and that’s useless. Your wife will be watching you say, “And then I went to shul…”
“Did you leave it in shul?”
“The passport? I don’t know!”
Or maybe it was a third party. Maybe one of the kids walked off with it. This random item that they have never once expressed any interest in before. Or maybe the cleaning lady threw it out. People say that getting a cleaning lady is sometimes good for sholom bayis, and this is why – you have someone to blame together. You can replace her, and then say things like, “It’s a good thing we got rid of that one. She kept stealing our car keys. But not our car. Just the keys. What a weirdo.”
Wonder if you actually threw it out. Second guess every move you’ve made in the past 3 months. Keep considering going through the garbage. If it’s a paper, keep threatening to go through the recycling. This is far less gross, and you only throw out the paper recycling when the bin gets full, which isn’t very often, because I mean it’s paper. This is a good reason to recycle – forget saving the planet; there’s nothing like hitting “undo” on a piece of paper you almost threw out.
“Wow, if we hadn’t gone through the recycling, this paper would have been gone in about 6–8 weeks!”
Consider the chance that you were very responsible. Perhaps you put it in such a safe place that even you can’t find it. So maybe stop looking and pat yourself on the back. You were successful! You don’t want a loser of items such as yourself to get his hands on such an important object.
So maybe you outwitted yourself. You have to ask yourself, “What is the smartest thing that I could have done with it?” But at the same time, you also have to ask yourself, “What is the dumbest thing that I could have done with it?” And then search everywhere in between.
Put money in a Reb Meir Baal HaNess pushka. Every Jewish home has one, regardless of sect or creed, no matter where they live or how long ago they got married. They find you. They put money in the pushka, and there you are.
If you can’t find your Reb Meir Baal HaNess pushka, put money in a different pushka and then say the tefillah that you need to say in order to find your Reb Meir Baal HaNess pushka.
Because you can’t just put the money in. There’s a tefillah. If you don’t know the tefillah, they print it on the side of the pushka because they know you’re going to lose it.
There are other tefillos on the pushka too, but this is the one everyone knows about. For example, there is a tefillah on there for subduing enemies. And if that doesn’t work in a timely-enough manner, you can throw the pushka at them. Keep it full. In case you’re ever face-to-face with your enemies, and you have your pushka on you.
But if even Reb Meir can’t help you,
Order a replacement of the item you’re missing. This works 100% of the time. The other one will show up. And then you have two! You can put one in a smart place and one in a place that is easy to find. This is great for sholom bayis!
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
