To be sick to death of things going missing and the blame being ascribed to me

[liveit]

Case in point right now. DH bought ds a football shirt last week. We now cannot find it. I have hunted extensively but I am getting ‘when did YOU last see it, where do you think YOU might have last put it’

Every. Time.

When something cannot be found everyone asks me and when I can’t find it the blame apparently lies with me

aibu to tell them to be responsible for their own bloody things

After years of being the default ‘finder of lost things’, mainly because I’m convinced other people look with their eyes closed, I’m very happily single now so this doesn’t happen. Well the stress of being the person that sorts out other people’s problems doesn’t happen.

However I’m in exactly the same situation myself. DS bought me a football shirt for mothers day. I was the only person to wear it or even touch it and it’s gone missing. It’s not stolen. I’ve looked for it to no avail. However we’re staying with DS at his house so I’ll just borrow one of his for the final game of the season today and I’ll find my new one when we get home.

I’m guessing divorce is a bit of a leap in this situation so tell DH to look for it properly. Shops are still open today if he can’t find it. If you keep fixing things the learned helplessness only gets worse.

Ha..I have a weirdo neighbour, I do water his plants when he is away so know he lives in a shit tip. He complained that someone had stolen his door key. He tried to get council to replace locks, they wouldn't, he got quotes for getting it done, too expensive. Reported to police.
Complained to me, I told him it will be in his place, nobody is going to bother nicking his keys! Look where he left them. He argued the toss that he had hunted high and low, Guess what, he found it this morning exactly where he said he had put it, just under a pile of shit.

DH used to be like it years ago, but would blame the kids. They had either moved or stolen whatever he was looking for. Now its only me and him, and he moans the kids don't bother ringing him. No shit Sherlock!

Love this. H got told off by a colleague a few months ago for not looking properly - she said ‘now open your proper eyes Steve, not your man eyes that you’ve been currently using’. He was really put out but I thought it was hilarious.

I no longer answer questions where the answer is available elsewhere. So I answer ‘I don’t know’ to questions about where things are, what bins need to go out and if the milk has been delivered. It does make life more peaceful and they learn to stop asking as it doesn’t produce the desired results!

I get the blame for moving things (normal translation of move in this context is tidy) so I just say well if I tidied it it will be where x belongs. E.g..hat on hat shelf, keys on the hook and if its not where it belongs then its nothing to do with me. Seems to work!

My "no idea" response to any stupid questions like that is most liberating.
A gift from a friend.

I don't search for things and I don't have conversations with someone in another room. If they want to talk to me, they can come into my space.

For some years now I have made it clear that I am no longer answering questions that begin with where is/where are? Everyone in the house is old enough to look for their own belongings if they lose them.

DD17 is terrible for blaming others when she’s lost something. She & I used to end up in a blazing row but I’m much better at staying calm now.

It’s having a uterus, @PoppinjayPolly - it is a well-known object-finding device. I can’t think of any other reason why everyone should assume that it’s always the woman’s role to find lost things.

My ex was exactly the same, I was always the one expected to find things and blamed if he couldn't find something, almost to the point I was reluctant to move something or put it away even if in the best interests of the kids' safety or when people (e.g. my parents) were visiting. Half the time it was him who would put something away and forget about it. More often than not, it would turn up when we least expected it or when none of us were thinking about it!

My ex used to do this. After I moved out he would blame the MICE for hiding his stuff. Gods honest truth . The mice also hid his bank card, which DS then found down the side of his chair in his car. Sneaky little things.

I will say, after I left him I challenged him over this behaviour and he nearly killed me and DS so....

Have you never heard the saying
'nothing is truly lost until Mum can't find it?'
Not the point at all, but it amused me 😂!

I grew a tiny human inside of me for 9 months whilst taking on the entire mental load of our toddler. I then birthed said tiny human and spent a week in hospital with her. DH spent a lot of time with me while his mum had the toddler but DH was obviously at home a lot more than I was.

I had been home from hospital for about 36hrs and we were getting ready to leave the house for the first time. DH holds up the changing bag and asks ME "Does the toddler have a change of clothes in here?" I replied "I don't know. You used the bag last" and suddenly he explodes into a temper and fucks off upstairs, refusing to come out with us. (For the record, this was very out of character)

I understand that the week had been a lot for him as well but honestly, if anyone had the right to a strop right there and then it certainly wasn't him!

this. Not my circus not my lost monkey

My classic examples are a lost caulking gun and a leather belt. He couldn't find the caulking gun, and said it had been at the entrance of the garage. I insisted I've not even been in the garage and wouldn't help for 45 mins, while he went through everything in the garage. He pleaded nicely with me to help so I went to look. It was where he left it, at the entrance of the garage, but he had thrown some cardboard recycling on top. 'I didn't think to look under". I found it immediately.

The belt was longer ago. He would pack a big, leather belt, jeans and a nice shirt in his bike bag, cycle to work, shower and change once there. After a month off over the summer he told me he couldn't find it, and where might I have put it? I said, after a wipe down at the beginning of summer, I had put it back in his bike bag, which is kept at the back door, ready to go. He said he looked there, where else might it be. I said it's in the bike bag. I haven't removed it. He said it isn't there again, where else might it be? Well, the basket at the back door, the laundry room, his closet... He looked and looked and insisted I help and as I had small kids I wondered if I had lost it and forgotten. Sleep deprivation is very difficult on the memory. So I looked for over an hour. Finally, in frustration, I said, 'Are you sure you looked in your bike bag?' He said, 'Yes, look for yourself. It isn't there.' Well, I looked and there it was. 'Oh, I didn't look in the big part!' It's a big belt, and doesn't fit in the little pockets and it is always in the big, main section. Insane.

Conversation in my house usually goes something like
Have you seen my X
No, when did you last have it?
Yesterday/this morning etc.
Oh well it's probably where you left it then.
End of conversation.

This is why im a minamlist, less crap to look for.
My mum would say well i cant find it YOU LOT must have put it somewhere.
No we didnt its because you have so much clutter things get mixed up.

I would not engage in a dialogue . You are not the chief searcher of lost stuff!

I used to get this years ago when my DD was young and now exH was still around. Every day it would be 'Where's my.....' Used to drive me mad.

I have ADHD and used to think I was a bit scatty with putting stuff down in strange places, but do you know something? Since my kids have left home and I now live alone I have not lost one single thing...

It’s funny reading this because I used to do this to my mum all. the. time.

Of course, my mum is an absolute nutter that despised even the smallest sign that I existed in her massive, pristine house. So she would take, hide, or throw away every single item of mine that she spotted and then lie and deny it to the bitter end, even when you’d find it in the bin of the room she was in. 🙄 She would also go into my room when I was gone and take or rearrange things. It didn’t matter how important the item was either; she once threw out the homework I was working on when I went to ask my dad a question. Once I moved out I never lost anything. My case was certainly an outlier though (or at least I hope so, for other people’s sakes!).

It’s interesting to see that so many men seem to revert to “asking mum” aka their wives.

Known as a ‘Year 6 look’ in our house

You need to properly commit to the saying “I don’t know” and then turning the sentence back round to them.

“I don’t know where the t-shirt is Dearest. When did YOU last see it?”
“oh hello darling daughter, you’ve mislaid your PE kit. I don’t know where it could be, where have you looked and did you move anything to look under stuff in that place?”
”hmmm that does sound like a pickle my sweetest boy child, I’m sorry to say I have no clue where your homework is. Have you tried retracing your steps to where you last had it?”

Stop being the solution and instead guide them lovingly towards sorting their own shit out.

Same. OH does this and it drives me mad. ‘No I did not put the nail scissors/ your missing sock/ the portable charger anywhere’. Some times I even end up believing I have even though I haven’t.
Last week it was
‘where have you put the garden shears’
’didn’t know we had garden shears, never seen them in my life’.

We don’t have garden shears. He was thinking of his dad’s house.

I just don't engage with this question.
When they say "have you seen my xyz anywhere" what they really mean is "i want you to do the looking and finding as i can't be bothered ". Nah.