How to find lost objects: 6 techniques that really work

A few years ago, I lost my passport two days before a big, international trip. Getting a new passport expedited would cost hundreds of dollars. And I wasn’t sure if it would even arrive in time.

You can imagine how stressed I was. The last time I saw my passport was on my bed. I turned my room upside down to try and find it, to no avail.

I ended up taking a day off of work to look for that passport. That’s how serious I was about finding it. But my search felt totally haphazard. I felt like I didn’t have the skills to look for it in a strategic way.

That experience made me wonder: There has to be a more methodical way of doing this. To find out, I asked visual search researchers, a metal-detecting enthusiast and a detective about the science and art of finding lost objects.

Here are five useful techniques to find items that go missing -- whether that’s something sentimental, like a class ring, or something valuable, like an envelope full of cash. I hope they help you find whatever you are looking for.

Expert strategies to find missing objects

Technique 1: Identify what makes your missing object stand out in its environment.

It might be its size, color, texture or shape. Then search based on that unique feature. It will make the process faster and more efficient, says Arryn Robbins, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Richmond who specializes in visual search. Instead of looking at everything in a space, this approach helps you focus your attention only on objects with that distinction.

Robbins used this tactic recently when she lost the back of a rose gold earring on a carpet in a similar color. So she changed her visual strategy to narrow in on anything shiny and reflective. “As soon as I thought about that, almost instantly I saw it,” she says.

Technique 2: Think about likely scenarios of how and why your object might have gotten lost in the first place -- and where it might be.

That’s how Demian Garcia, a metal-detecting enthusiast based in Northern California, helps clients find their missing jewelry in challenging places like parks, beaches and roads.

Even before he turns on his metal detector, he starts off his search by asking his clients basic questions. “Do you have any locations where you put it normally? Where have you lost it before?” he says.

If you’ve lost your class ring, for example, look where you usually place it: the bedside table, your jewelry box, the bathroom counter. If you’ve lost your ring in the car before -- because you play with it while driving -- check there too.

Then, think through any specific situations that may have prompted you to lose your object in the first place. Garcia goes through typical ways people lose rings off their hands. “Did you throw anything away that day? Were you dealing with cold water? Did you put on lotion somewhere?” Those questions can help you figure out a more targeted strategy of where to look.

Technique 3: Recreate the movement of the object around the area you first remembered losing it.

The behavior of how the object falls, lands or moves as you act out the scene may provide clues as to where the object might be. Garcia uses this tactic when clients lose a ring because they’ve thrown it out a window or across a room -- usually during an argument.

Garcia recalls helping a woman who threw her wedding ring out the passenger window of the car. “She kept going, ‘I threw it straight out right there,’ ” he says.

He wondered: Was it really “right there”? To test the theory, he took a cheap ring, tied a long red ribbon onto it, and asked the woman to throw it out the window like she did with her wedding ring. “She threw it three times in a row and it never went straight out the window. It went flying back behind the car,” he says. Because of this technique, he was able to find the woman’s ring.

Technique 4: Break out of your search routine by changing your perspective.

Professional finders, like search and rescue responders, don’t just look at the floor when they search for missing persons in the wilderness, says Michael Hout, a cognitive psychologist and the director of the vision sciences and memory lab at New Mexico State University.

They scan their environment in 360 degrees. That means “looking down, looking up, looking left and right, crouching down to change your perspective, turning around to view things that weren't visible to you when you first approached them,” says Hout.

You may be surprised by what you find. “A windbreaker that someone shed when they were getting hot, for example, might have been picked up by the wind and blown into a bush or a tree, for example,” he says.

Technique 5: Look in weird and unexpected areas.

If you can’t find your keys in the places where you normally leave them -- your purse, your pocket, the entryway table at the front door -- “force yourself to look in low-probability areas,” says Hout. “Sometimes people put their keys in weird places. Maybe they dropped them. Or someone moved them.”

Technique 6: Divide your space up into sections, then search each section thoroughly.

Grid search, as it's called, is one form of systematic search, says Robbins. It’s sometimes used in search and rescue as a last resort to find missing people. But it can also be a useful tool if you’re looking for something in a messy room, where your missing object’s distinctive features may be hard to spot.

“It's going to be slow and less efficient, but it's going to ensure that you find the thing you're looking for,” says Robbins. “Imagine your search environment as a grid. Cover each square in the grid, maybe top to bottom, left to right.”

The idea is to come up with a thorough search strategy without having to remember every location you’ve already looked at, she says. You don’t necessarily have to measure out a grid. Just imagine breaking down the search environment into smaller units -- sections of a room, pieces of furniture -- then search those units in an order that makes sense to you. If you need to, use Post-it Notes to mark where you’ve already looked.

How I finally found my missing passport

I was hours into my search and my brain was fried. I sat on the bed and looked around the room. And then I just had this moment of clarity. The passport has to be near the bed. That’s where I last saw it.

So I pushed the mattress off the bed. And where did I find it? Wedged between the wall of the bed and the side of the mattress!

While I didn’t have any of the strategies I am giving you now to look for my passport, what I did have was persistence. That’s what you’ll need if you want to succeed in finding your lost object.

I asked Darryl Ellis, head of A-1 Detective Agency in Illinois, what it takes to be a good detective. He’s been a private investigator since 1996.

“If I had to use one word, I would say tenacity,” he says. If you’ve lost something you really care about, keep going. Don’t give up.