Not too recently, but a while back I pulled the last kitchen towel from a drawer and spotted a bit of broken glass. Picked it out and froze mid toss as my mind somehow told my arm: "Nooooooo! Smoooooooth, Too smoooooth!!!"

It was my engagement diamond I'd lost from its setting almost exactly a year earlier.

Ladies, check your prongs!

This mornimg I started cleaning out the basement and found my decades old art supplies: water colors, pastels and lots of acrylics. Recently started taking art classes again and had just this month touched color again. Great timing!!

While purging my office of papers, I found a receipt for a rug that had started offgassing and making me sick. It was quite expensive at the time, and now I have the receipt so I can see if they'll work with me. I had looked for it quite a while ago and thought I had it but wasn't sure where. Now, I know exactly where it is; waiting for me in my newly reorganized Pending file!

I mentioned in another thread I've lost a piece to an antique scale that got packed when we moved in 1994. I still have hope I can find it when we clean out the basement this summer.

I've also lost a cd from a local band here in town and can not figure out where it could have gone. I've cleaned out all my cd's (they used to be in three different places) and gone through every room in my house. That one is really bugging me.

I found one of the first (vinyl) records I ever bought and figured out a better place to set up the old turntable. I'm enjoying playing that record again; it's a total blast from the past. In fact I'm enjoying playing all my old records again, high-maintenance-jump-up-and-flip-them-over that they are!

Good save, Celtic, on finding your diamond!

Have you found your keys yet, minet?

In March, I lost one of the garage door openers. We don't use the garage for our cars, but I do use the opener regularly to go in and out when I'm carrying bulky items that I don't want to lug through the house (like my cello). I looked everywhere, and even called the church where we'd had a rehearsal and asked them to look for it.

Then a couple of weeks ago, it churned up from the stuff in my car somehow and popped up right next to the driver's seat.

(I only drive once or twice a week, but my car is somewhat messy, with maps and directions to places. I call the mess my antitheft device.)

It's now Sunday evening and I still haven't found the box of keys. I don't remember the last time I saw it, if it was in our current house, the rental apartment we used for a couple of months before this, or the house we sold in SoCal.

And now I'm wondering where I put the keys to the safe deposit box we opened here in February. I would normally have put them into the key box ... so either I put them into that box and then lost the box, or couldn't find the box and put them somewhere else ... where?

Keys, keys, keys. At our house in SoCal I always knew where they were. In the snowman box in the kitchen drawer. Now where could they be?

Minet, maybe rather than trying to find them, stop and clear your head. Then imagine you have them and need to put them somewhere.

That has worked for me (Disney passes years later).

Good luck.

the best way to find something is to ask someone to help you look for it.

The more embarrassing the person you ask, the better. You know, like your mother-in-law, or the pastor's wife, or your new neighbor w/ the immaculate house.

Get them to come help you look, and when they walk in the door, that snowman box will magically appear in the drawer.

What place was *like* the kitchen drawer, either in the old rental, or in your new home? If you felt you couldn't put that box in the kitchen drawer, where else would you have turned to? Nearby? or another drawer in another room? and did THAT area get packed into a specific box?

For me, when I give up and either just start cleaning up and clearing out, or start looking for something else, that's when I find things that I had given up on.

How ironic - last night I picked up the book I've been reading this week and glanced at the title:

It's Hard to Make a Difference When You Can't Find Your Keys. :-)

The drawer in my old kitchen, where I used to keep the key box, was emptied into one box and labeled "Open Immediately" and it was opened and emptied a few months ago. The new place where I would have put the keys (don't have enough drawers in new kitchen for a "junk" one) is the cabinet shelf with the vitamins, and I've looked there several times. I'm at the point where I'm looking at the already looked-at spots, twice and three times.

My DH says it's not important, since I don't need any of the keys right now, but it's like a symbol to me of my absent mindedness, my lack of organization. The keys have become larger than themselves - they're now symbolic of my whole life.

The book, by the way, is about the psychology behind clutter and disorganization - why people hang onto things and how to move past that. It's interesting but I've just skimmed over some of it. One section I put a marker in because I want to go back and re-read it when I've finished the rest.

Still battling my horrid cold but will press on this week.

I did a big decluttering lately, we're selling our house; I "found" many "lost" objects, the most important one being my diamond earrings, they were missing for 6 months because I lost one of the butterfly backs and wasn't wearing them. They were in my junk drawer in the kitchen, I can't even remember putting them there. They are now in my wallet's coin section so I can remember to go and buy the missing back today.

DH lost his car keys in the house yesterday, they haven't turned up yet !!
He left for work with his spare keys.

It's been two months and I still haven't come across the missing box of keys. I'm beginning to think it got given away accidentally to Goodwill, with other things. Maybe I should ask them?

I *did* find the missing safe deposit box key, I think, last night. Yesterday at the bank I asked how much it would cost to get the keys replaced and they said $150. They get a locksmith in to drill out the old lock and replace it. Yikes! I didn't want to pay for that and I decided to find them.

DH and I spent some time looking all over the garage again, in the office again, in the dresser drawers again, in the kitchen again, looking for that box. No luck.

I began thinking that maybe they weren't in the box of keys, maybe I'd just put them somewhere else. All this time I was remembering it as a set of two keys, in a little envelope, in the missing box of keys. But that's how my old safe deposit box keys were stored. Maybe this was different, since we'd just moved to a different house.

So I opened my mind and thought, "Where would I put just two keys for safe keeping? If they're not in the usual place, where else would I have stashed them in a hurry?"

Went through the dresser drawers again, then looked in the jewelry box which I rarely open. And there was a single, odd looking key with a long number engraved on it. That must be it. It didn't look like my old safe deposit box keys and it was just by itself. But what else could it be?

I must have only got one, and probably put it into my wallet at the bank and then into the jewelry box later and then forgot about it during the unpacking of the move.

That bank branch is closed today so I can't check it out until Monday, but I'm fairly certain that's it. Yay! I would have been really angry at myself if I'd had to pay $150 to get a new key, just because I'd been too disorganized to find the original one.

I will let go of the need to find the missing box of keys, since I now have what I really needed from it. Either the box will show up on its own terms or it will be gone forever. Although I will check with Goodwill. I was putting lots of things into boxes and donating a couple of weeks, and it's possible the keys got mixed in there somehow.

My husband was having troulble with our comnputer printer. He wanted to uninstall and re-run the software CD, but he couldn't find the disc anywehere. He's very methodical and keeps all his computer stuff together. We looked three times, found old manuals, kids games, all kinds of stuff but no printer disc. I went upstairs to lie down for a nap. When I woke, I looked up and my eyes spotted a small envelope on top of the dresser, near the ceiling. Yup, the disc was in it!

Yep, my disc with all my internet passwords. It's probably with your little blue box.

Once it took me two years to find my good jewelry. I had hidden the boxes in the piano bench. Never did that again. You can tell I don't play the piano much.

For many years I kept my Christmas "jewelry"...pins, etc., that I only wear at Christmas in a wooden box that I rec'd as a graduation gift from a furniture store. Many of the pins are older, and a few are worth a bit of money as collectables. Of course they are all special to me since they were gifts from family members who are no longer with us! In 1997/98, I moved 6 times in about 6 months...I still haven't found the little wooden box :^( I found the KEY, but alas no box! So if you find a little wooden box with your snowman, please save it for me! Thanks :^)