I lose more device screws than anyone on the planet. I excel at this in both speed and quantity. I drop them down heating registers, into my clothes, into piles of sawdust, crawlspaces. I haven't swallowed one yet, but it's a matter of time. Sometimes I just put them down and 1 second later they're gone.

I'm adding a new Murphy's law for this. The more unique the fastener, the more likely it will get lost.

I agree, in fact I keep every one out of every old device I take out. I just know I will need it someday, the "odd screw and bolt" compatrment in my truck has saved the day more than once.

I lose tools. Attics and crawl spaces are littered with things that fall out of my tool pouches. The only tools I don't lose are the old, dull, stiff spares.

I solved this, by putting them in my pouch. Always have one this way. And for some reason they don t go missing. They only try to escape when you need em and don t have one LOL

The pieces that I collect whenever I find them are the cap screws off wall fixtures. They are apparently a different thread, not a 6 or 8. I was installing a light on the front of a boat house. I dropped the cap in the lake. I have replacements now. Never again.

I had tools stolen a few months back. So when I looked in my truck the other day and realized my fluke meter, amp meter and wiggy were missing, I was disgusted thinking I had been hit again. Two days later I found my wiggy in the front seat under a book, my amp meter I had left at home and my fluke I had left at ace hardware when I wire the propane pump. No thievery, only incompetince on my part. I felt stupid but glad to have my tools back. I also apologize to all the honest people who walked by the truck who I looked at with suspicion.

A lot of my tools have secret legs. This property of tools to go walkies has uncannily coincided with me getting older. This strange phenomenon has also affected my spectacles. I solved it by buying cheap glasses on t'internet. Now, I have up to 48 pairs wandering about al fresco making a pair easy to find. You just lassoo a pair from the herd as it stampedes past, heading for some remote corner of the county. Yeeehaaarrr!

I often called our family apartment a black hole... all kinds of stuff can disappear here. Like we have around 6 of those folding metal desk lamps (funnel shaped metal shade on a long folding arm with 3 joints and springs to keep it balanced) but only 2 or 3 of the "feet" needed to clamp them to the desk.

i do bad things on ladders

on the bright side, i've developed a rather keen sense of balance

~S~

I have never owned a razor knife for more than 24 hours.

Hey this really is a feel good thread, I do all of these things and it is reassuring to know I am not the ony one...

I actually have been cleaning up after a job, had tools and garbage in hand, and tossed the whole works into the trashcan! At least before I left the job I had the sense to look in the trash for my “missing tools”.

There isn't a tool made that i haven't found a way to abuse

~S~

Drop something unimportant on the floor. You will trip over it within minutes. Drop something vital, like an oddball special screw and it will bounce 80 feet down the shop never to be seen again. Till you eventually find another one, then you trip over it!

I love how I can spend half an hour trying to hook something with a fish tape, yet within seconds it will hook everything else in the room that I didn't want to catch.

I find some of the missing screws when I strip down to shower. And of course lots of insulation, sawdust, and wire trimmings in 12 and 14 awg.

I put 3M reflective tape on all the hand tools. Then I can shine a flashlight and watch for the glow on the way out. Unless it's that blow-in fluffy stuff. Drop something in there, no matter how large, it could be a repro saw. Fuhgetit- it's gone for ever.

Maybe you need a small metal detector for finding stuff in the grass or in the attic.

I have borrowed my neighbor's a time or two when I am looking for a piece of unobtanium I dropped in the yard.

I drive from job to job eating, talking, and even taking notes, my dashboard looks like an electrical flea market....

i'm pretty much a hazard to society, but hey, i saved a bundle with Gieco!

~S~

Good one!

I believe in the law of averages (and Murphy's Law), I have lost way more tools then I have found. So there is some schmuck out there who finds more tool then he/she has lost. I like to find that so and so, he/she owes me big time. One time I didn't lose a tool over a period time and my tool supplier sent me a "get well" card

I blew two motors in my work trucks within a few years too....Murphy is my copilot.....~S~

Steve,
Funny you should say that, I know a local sparky here that thinks outside the square.
You know them trendy glass-type "white-boards" they have on shows like CSI and the like, he has a marker that he writes on the left-side of his windscreen (in a RHD vehicle), parts he needs for a job, etc.
Doesn't obstruct your vision unless you are looking straight through it (which you aren't, if you are driving).

That's not a bad idea Trumpy, at least for someone with an appreciable level of organization

I've been in 'feast mode' where the truck doesn't get cleaned out too well though

I'd have to be someplace i could find it.....~S~

Mike, isn't that the dreaded "texting while driving" in a prehistoric sense.