Where do they go?

Hmmmm. I keep finding radiator keys basking in the sun on the patio here. I wondered where they kept coming from. ;-)

The disappearance of tools is a well known problem. Even Nasa has not solved it. If you listen to the space station you quite often hear.. We cannot find the xxx in the place you said it should be, have you any other suggestions.

So, the best thing to say is that its probably all due to Quantum weirdness and eventually things do appear again. I often wonder if our ancestors knew about this when they named certain tables occasional, as most of the time they must have been something else.

Brian

It's possible that they are keeping all those lost socks weighted down somewhere. My theory has always been that the socks are reincarnated as wire coat hangers, but you might have found an alternative solution.

They are the larval form of Ikea allen keys.

-- Halmyre

Something I was told (and found in practice at times myself too) is that if you have just 1 of something, you always know where it is. If you have multiple copies of something, typically some or all of them will be lost.

I presume the logic is that if you have many of something, you don't keep track of them as much because (whether consciously or subconsciously) you'll always have a spare if it gets lost. When you just have 1 of something, you always put it back or always keep track of it as if it gets lots, you're stuck.

Like any other important key, stick a ring on it and keep it with all the others.

They live with the tape measures and Stanley knives.

And scissors.

Which is why I *never* look down the back of the sofa for a missing fiver.

And cans of WD40.

-- Halmyre

Eloped with the silicon spray.

More profound is that the adage that you always fnd it in the last place you look for it doesn't apply to multiple items.

How do they know?

It would likely incite the whole bunch to hide then!

Mine are the 'winged' type...

This is along the same lines as dropping a number of things and finding all but one. I first learnt this when I dropped 72 1/8" balls and found 71. Well, I actually found 72 but one of them was rusty and pitted so it's not a new phenomenon.

Racial memory - it's in the mitochondrial DNA.

Yebbut, it's handy to have 3 spread around. This is, of course, a temporary situation as they'll end up in a group somewhere near the bunch of spectacles, pencils, tape measures etc. I've about a dozen or so tape measures through house, loft and sheds and there's always one missing and two somewhere else.

At least SKs and their blades are never seen together.

The only way to sort *that* is to label them. Our five TM's all ended up in the same drawer more often than not, until I labelled each one - Car, Office, Utility Room, Toolbox, etc. That's worked a lot better.