Why can’t you remember where you put the thing? You made a special place for it!
ADHD
You’ve got a new or important thing. You don’t have a spot where you keep that thing yet. You decide — this is a good place for the thing, it’s secure. You put it there.
Literally any amount of time later, including the same day:
Where did you put that thing?
Cannot find the thing.
Why does this happen?
I think this is caused by performing an action at the same time as trying to remember something important in our short term memory but with no mnemonic devices*.
Because it’s not a place you normally store similar things, you can’t remember your own reasoning because you were in the middle of an action (the act of putting it away). You’re likely to look in the places you put other things normally.
It’s the same thing that happens when we are walking into another room and we just immediately forget why. The act of walking and trying to get there takes precedent. We got stuck on the ‘walk’ tab of our brain.
The act of putting it in that place and not writing it down somewhere basically short circuits you remembering. I test this all the time, as I reorder a glue gun for the 4th time because I cannot find mine. I really need to do inventory.
*I like singing little songs to try to remember things in the middle of a task. It doesn’t work as well for ‘places’ I put things, but it helps when I’m walking to the kitchen singing about how I want iced tea, I’m likely to remember why I walked in there.