Menopause Brain Fog and Forgetfulness: How to Stop Losing Things

Running a small business with many hands touching things can mean things go missing.

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Files are not consistently named correctly or they are filed where a team member thinks they belong rather than following the written SOP (standard operating procedure) for naming and filing documents.

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And as robust as search can be on today’s computers, more than once I have typed in the exact name of a file into the search field only to have the computer return a million other files but not the one I was looking for.

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At that point I have to start manually searching and imagining, if I were _________, where would I have put this?

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Most of the time, I’m successful, but there have been a few times where I’ve lost almost an hour digging through files and folders looking for a specific document that I could have sworn existed.

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Now multiply that by 9 every day—that’s how often the average person goes looking for something that can’t be found in 30 seconds or less.

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And that’s with a system—imagine doing it with brain fog.

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If you're in perimenopause or menopause, you may already know the feeling.

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My friend Jennifer, a cancer survivor, calls it chemo-brain.

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I’ve heard more than one friend refer to it as a “senior” moment.

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Whatever the label, you walk into a room and forget why.

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You put your glasses down and they vanish.

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You know you saved that document, but you have no idea where.

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You for sure know you downloaded it because you can find 14 copies of the original in your downloads folder—just not the one you edited or filled out.

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Sunday, October 18, is World Menopause Day, so let's talk about the part of brain fog you can actually do something about.

WHY DO I KEEP LOSING THINGS?

Most of the time, you keep losing things because they don't have one assigned place to live—so every time you set something down, your memory has to do the job a system should be doing.

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And to be clear, you’re probably not actually losing them, just misplacing them.

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They’re likely still in your home, just nowhere visible.

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Either way, when your memory is sharp, you can get away with that for a while.

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You can retrace your steps, and piece together what brought you into the room and what you were looking for.

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But when your memory isn't sharp, the cracks show up surprisingly fast.

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Let’s use a parking lot to illustrate this.

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Unlike at work where you may be lucky enough to have an assigned spot, when you go to the market each week, parking is up for grabs.

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So you’re parking in the same lot but not the same spot—you know the lanes you prefer and how close or far away from the cart return slot you want to be.

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And you may even have a routine for driving up your preferred lane first, but if you can’t find a spot, you shift to hunting for the first available that isn’t too far.

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So parking in a different spot every week means you have to remember where you left the car every single time.

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On a good day, you can probably remember that you were four lanes to the left of the entrance and about halfway up the row.

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On a foggy day, you're wandering through the rows, scanning for a car your color, and pressing the key fob and hoping to see your lights flash and hear a faint chirp.

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When you park in the same spot every day, there's nothing to remember.

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You just walk to it.

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That's the first rule of my Organizational Triangle®: one home for everything.

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Your keys, your glasses, your phone, your phone charger—each one needs its own assigned parking spot.

THE MYTH: "MY MEMORY IS JUST GOING"

Here's what most people tell themselves when they can't find something:

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"I'm just getting older."

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"My brain just doesn't work like it used to."

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"I'd lose my head if it weren't attached."

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This kind of self-talk is so powerful in shaping how we think and feel about stuff and how we think and feel about ourselves.

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I hear it from students all the time.

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No doubt we are all aging every day.

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Albert Einstein is often misquoted as saying, “Never memorize something that you can look up.”

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He said something related but not as concise or quotable.

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But the point is well-taken.

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There is little to be gained from relying on memory for things that can be systematized.

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And while brain fog is something a lot of women talk about during this season of life, we can’t blame it exclusively for our inability to find something in 30 seconds or less if we didn’t put it back in its home when we were finished with it.

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Or if it didn’t have a home to begin with.

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Losing or misplacing things is usually less about your memory and more about where things live and habits.

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You can't remember where you put something if it never had a place to go in the first place.

HOW TO STOP LOSING THINGS

Start by setting a timer for 15 minutes.

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Then pick the 3 things you lose most often.

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For a lot of people, that's keys, glasses, and their phone.

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Give each one a home.

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For your keys, since you likely don’t need them inside the house, that could be a single home like a hook by the door or a dish on a table near the entry.

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For things you use in multiple locations, like your phone, it should have a home in every room you go into.

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Even the bathroom if you take it in there.

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That could be a dish on the counter, or a charger plugged into an outlet in the kitchen.

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You may do what I do which is have readers in every room.

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Which means I take them off my face when I leave one room and put on a different pair when I get where I’m going.

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That way the office glasses stay in the office.

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Now, if you just wear a single pair of glasses but you like to take them off your face throughout the day, do the same thing with them as you do with the phone.

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Establish a place in each room they go when they are taken off your face.

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This may sound cumbersome, and I get that.

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But the average person will waste an entire year of their lives looking for lost or misplaced items.

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In 5, 10 and 15-minute increments.

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And this is the proven cure for that.

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So it all comes down to a choice.

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Do you want to waste a year of your life looking for things?

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Or do you want to invest a few minutes establishing homes for things once and then never having to look for them again?

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Because once you have an established home for something, all you have to do is put it in its home.

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Not near its home.

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Exactly in its home.

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It may feel clunky or mechanical for a week or two.

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But it quickly becomes automatic, like parking in your reserved spot without thinking about it.

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Cheryl, a graduate of the Unstuff Your Life System®, says this one rule probably saved her life.

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When EMS was called to her home and she was being placed on a gurney, she was able to direct the EMS team to the exact spot in her home where her keys and her healthcare proxy lived.

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Previously, they would have been searching through the house instead of quickly getting her into the ambulance, locking up, and racing off to the hospital.

WHAT ABOUT ALL THE DIGITAL STUFF?

Here's where it gets sneaky.

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The same thing happens on your phone and your computer—you just can't see the piles.

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The file you saved "somewhere."

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The photo you know you took but can't find among thousands of others.

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The password you reset for the 12th time this year.

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Every download that lands in the Downloads folder is a car parked in a random spot.

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Every screenshot you took to deal with later is another one.

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And when your memory is foggy, digital clutter costs you just as much time as the keys you can't find—maybe more, because there's no hook by the door to hang up your PDF bank statement.

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So the same rule applies here: one home for everything.

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One place for passwords, like a password app or a spreadsheet.

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One place for each document—inside a folder that also has one home.

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And one place for photos you actually want to keep.

THE DEEPER WHY: IT'S NOT A CHARACTER FLAW

So if the fix is this simple, why does losing things feel like such a personal failure?

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Because every lost item feels like more evidence.

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Evidence that you're slipping.

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That you can't keep up.

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That something's fundamentally wrong with you.

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And when you're already dealing with everything else this season of life brings, that evidence can feel heavier and more damning than the misplaced keys ever were.

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But needing a system isn't a sign of decline.

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It's a sign that you're carrying more than your memory was ever meant to hold.

HOW, AGAIN: LET THE SYSTEM DO THE REMEMBERING

You don't have to remember where everything you set down currently is.

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You just have to remember where the home for everything is.

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Few things live solitary lives.

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Our phone is something that we move around with us and is often our only phone.

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But your spatula?

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It lives in one place in your kitchen with all of its siblings.

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Give your keys a home.

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Give your glasses a home in every room you wear them.

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Give your files a home in a digital or physical file cabinet.

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That way, even when your brain is foggy, your system still works—because there's nothing to remember.

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You just walk to your thing’s home and there it is.

READY TO STOP LOSING THINGS?

How much of your day goes to looking for things you already own?

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If the digital side is where you lose the most—files, photos, passwords, an inbox you're afraid to open—join me for Declutter Your Digital Life™, a 90-minute live workshop on Thursday, October 29, from 7:00–8:30pm Eastern.

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We'll cover your devices and apps, files and photos, email, and how to keep it all maintained, with a Companion Workbook and unlimited replays.

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Save your spot here → https://go.andrewmellen.com/ddl-live

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In the meantime, set a timer.

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Pick 3 things.

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Give each one a home.

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Start there.