This Nifty Trick Will Help You Find Lost Items In Your Home Much Quicker

We've all experienced it: You pop your keys down for two seconds and suddenly they have disappeared. But new research may have the answer to all our lost item woes.

The study, from the University of Aberdeen, has found that the best thing to do is to look in the most cluttered areas of your house.

Looking in tidy parts of your house for a missing item is actually a waste of your time and energy, according to the research. The reason for this is that, when you look over an uncluttered area, your brain realises the item isn't there in just a glance.

"If you're looking for your keys you should focus on the areas with the most clutter, because if they were somewhat more obvious, you would have found them by now," study author Anna Maria Nowakowska said, the Independent reports.

Cluttered room

The study involved a scavenger hunt where the eye movements of participants were tracked as they searched for a specific target.

The situations were varied and the target was hidden within an image divided into two halves. One half was cluttered and one was neat. The target was easy to find in the neat one but more difficult in the cluttered. However, the researchers found that participants spent just as long analysing the easier half.

In conclusion, the researchers found that the best search strategy is to not look in the clearer section at all, but to focus all your hunting energy on the cluttered areas.

"If the target were present on the easy side, you could easily see it using peripheral vision," Nowakowska told Seeker. "Looking at the easy side gives you no new information; it only slows you down."

The study found that we make lots of unnecessary eye movements over the same area even though our brains are aware the target object is not there.

So if you've got that friend or family member who always seems to misplace their wallet or keys, let them know about this nifty trick. To test how sharp your eyes are, have a go at spotting this lonely goat in a flock of sheep.

Katie Avis-RiordanI'm Web Writer at Country Living and House Beautiful