€440m worth of items lost every year

Irish people lose €440m worth of belongings every year, with items most frequently being lost between 2pm and 6pm on Saturdays in December.

The transition from work to weekend and the combination of Saturday lunches, Christmas shopping, and Christmas celebrations creates an annual Bermuda triangle into which people’s belongings mysteriously disappear, according to a survey by mozy.ie

Nearly as many items going missing on Fridays and Saturdays as the rest of the week put together, the survey found.

The most commonly lost item is the smartphone, which accounts for nearly 40% of all items lost by men and 27% by women.

Mozy’s Claire Galbois-Alcaix said: “Getting carried away and carrying too much were two of the top reasons for losing things, and dashing home from work to get to a seasonal party or bustling back after a day of Christmas shopping are great examples of these.

“Going straight from work to a party, laptop bag in hand, or snapping the festive fun with the camera on your smartphone puts more than just the devices themselves at risk though. As the research shows, it’s the vital work on the laptop or the irreplaceable pictures on your phone that people really hate to lose.”

The global results of the survey revealed Americans were twice as likely to lose the run of themselves as the Irish, while the Germans were the least likely.

seen as I've lost my bank card I'm going to do my Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve! going to get what you're given my dear friends!

— Stef Massam (@stefmassam_x) December 6, 2012

Germans were also the most persistent in tracking down lost items, often spending a month or more hunting down missing things. The average Irish person gave up after a week of searching.

Perhaps giving up searching is the most rational thing to do, considering that fewer than half of lost items are ever recovered.

People have to rely on the goodwill of their neighbours in returning lost items. However, while 75% of people have found lost items, only about half have actually returned what they have found.