I am always losing stuff.  I can’t keep track of anything.

What should I do?

Losing stuff can be absolutely maddening.  Misplacing things, especially repeatedly, can keep us off-kilter.  But the frantic search exhausts us too. 

While you might be tempted to search for that misplaced sweater by ripping up your closet and throwing things this way and that, a better idea is to clean up.  Rather than ripping through, start to organize the closet a little more.  In other words, instead of speeding up, slow down.

This might feel counter-intuitive, or perhaps it doesn’t.  Maybe you’re thinking that you don’t have time to start organizing, you need to find that sweater!  But it will likely take you less time to just start cleaning up. 

Several decades ago, I misplaced a $800 check.  Nobody wants to lose $800 ever, but we really couldn’t afford to lose this check.  My heart raced and pounded in my chest and I almost started ripping through files scattering papers everywhere.  But I stopped myself.  And one-by-one, I took each file and sorted through it, putting things where they belonged.  At one point, when I was taking a file out, I saw that the check had slipped down between two files.  I had found it.  Staying calm, though, had helped me. 

Speeding up when trying to solve a problem or find a missing item rarely works.  Take a breath, slow down and start cleaning up instead.