It is a common thing that happens to everyone in their day-to-day life – losing things or cannot remember where we kept something. Not all people are tech savvy to use smart gadgets or cannot afford to buy one. Here are few tips to remember, retrace lost items or to remember the stuffs that one need to.

1. Remember where you last time saw the lost item – Walk through the location, try to retrace your steps. This will help you to locate the item.
2. Check places where the item should be: Do you a careful search where generally you keep the item. Instead of keeping the item in its place you would have slightly misplaced it nearby.
3. Parked car- Write down the place or landmark where you parked the car. Parking places are numbered, note it down. Street parking – note down street name/ cross street or nearby store, house number
4. Cannot remember item name? Start visualizing. Run through alphabets and vowels. This could help.
5. Use smartphones or tablets – If you want to remember something, make a list. Put it on your phone as an image or store in notes
6. Put it on paper- To remember something that is critical for you, writing on piece of paper helps.  It helps you to memorize.
7. Studying hard & can’t remember? Use common Mnemonics. For example:  To remember names of the planets  use “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas” where the first letter of each word stands for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, respectively! You can formulate your own Mnemonics using popular songs!
8. Close your eyes, take few deep breaths – calmly do this, it could bring back memory of where you kept an item.
9. Make it a habit of keeping things in same place  whether it is home or work.
10. Place labels where you need to keep things and always place items in the respective places.
11. Get in the habit of saying locations or place name loud when you put something there in a place, instead of waiting until you need to remember it. This will also draw attention of your spouse or family member who can say later you kept it there.
12. Keep your home and work desk uncluttered – There are more chances of losing items when house is cluttered. Keep things uncluttered and place item in same designated place.
13. Sleep on it – Do you know, if you can’t remember about something, after a good night sleep or a nap, brain will reset, and you would be able to remember what you need to.
14. Moving around – Walking or doing some activities that helps to bring more oxygen and blood to brain will trigger memory.
15. If you are a person who is losing stuffs often, probably you should focus on your diet. Cut down on fried items, fat and meat. Cholesterol built up plaques can damage not just heart , brain cells as well.
16. While looking for an item, that is critical and you must have it,  then do not get distracted by phone or talk. Focus on searching. Mute social media notification for sometime.
17. If something is not that critical to find or to remember immediately, give sometime. Memory will come back after a while and you could find the stuff or remember the things that you have forgotten.
18. Get help – if you need to remember or find things urgently, seek and ask your family or friends help. They probably would know where it is, what it is etc.

Image credit: age by Karolina Grabowska from Pixabay  (Free for commercial use)