We do not define our happiness by material possessions. But we all do own things. And when we lose them, it is pretty damn annoying.

It’s been estimated that the average person in developed Western societies owns 175,000 differentiated things. So much shit. And so many places in which we store it. Cupboards, bags, attics, washbags, drawers, cars and pockets.

When observed, it’s somewhat of a miracle we can ever find anything at all. My Dad is a wizard at this. “Have you seen that blue Phillips screwdriver anywhere, Dad?” … He’d close his eyes… Then – “Yeah Sammy… [Squints harder] The second drawer in the black cabinet in the cupboard under the stairs”.

He’s especially good at it, but we all maintain a slice of this superpower. Ever and always, we are subconsciously cross-checking an internalised inventory, then mapping visual perception over our spatial and temporal memory. Updating priors; wiping slates of memory clean.

It must use up so much mental bandwidth. But it’s perhaps a prudent investment when one considers the frustration of losing things.

Did you ever own a Nintendo DS? If so, did you ever own one of those cartridges that got your mate’s uncle got from his mate down the pub that contained one hundred different pirated games? I must have been eight when I got off a plane, and left a case filled with all my DS games along with that one.

Devastation. Happily, for the child of the cabin crew or the cleaner, their mum or dad came home with a case filled with digital delights. Unhappily for me, I was out of pocket, and out of pocket of something I could not replace.

It was a formative experience. The pang of self-flagellation, knowing it’s no one’s fault but your own. The longing to have it back, married to that niggling itch which continues to tickle your brain.

Whenever leaving anywhere (that isn’t my home), I’ll do a sweep – create a pause in my hurried brain before context switching into the next important activity. Check the pocket in the back of the seat; stand on my tippy-toes to see nothing has slipped out in the overhead rack; open the wardrobes and the safe and look under the bed to check nothing has rolled away.

Is this overdoing it? Perhaps. But I think it necessary too. The physicist David Deutsch has often made the analogy that by living through winter in England, we might as well already be on Mars. We have morphed, over the past millennia into multi-material cyborgs.

It is only through technological innovation – clothing, then buildings, then heat generation – that we were able to leave the temperate environment of the savannah’s plains, in favour of a world in which we’d be dead within hours without technological protection.

Your keys, your phone, your reusable coffee cup; lippy, lighter, tabs; face wipes, book, chargers – laptop, power bank, USB, USB-C, lightning cable – Graze bar, passport and wallet.

The circle of necessity has expanded, and with it so too has our capacity for inventory tracking. But this is not an evolved skill. Nomadic humans, as we all were only 13,000 years ago, could carry only what they could carry for 15 miles each day. Seldom more than a spear and a baby.

What to do about this? Well, one option is to get rid of everything. Reduce your material possessions to the barest essentials. Maximal minimalism. When hiking, one carries everything one needs to survive in one’s backpack and few things more. Shelter, warmth, water, food. It is incredibly liberating.

But to live in this manner in modern developed society? What a ball ache. When thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, there is only one identity: the identity of the thru-hiker. Footloose, free, driven, ambitious, unconstrained.

Looking at how these norms translate into clothing, functionality and comfort emerge as paramount. If it keeps you warm, if it feels comfortable, then who cares. Wear a bandana; don’t wash for days at a time; wear some heavy-ass trekking boots if they work for you, or some skimpy trail runners if not.

Such norms, for good reason, don’t extend to normal life. This week I’m working three days in the office and staying at friends’ houses in the nights between. In packing, I have had to cater to many different versions of me. Sam the Corporate Employee; Sam the Runner; Sam the Chill Guy; Sam who wears Clean Clothes Every Day. And all these identities require different costumes.

And so, we acquire different costumes to dress up for all our different roles. We acquire new toys and gizmos that help us perform these roles better, whilst also making them more comfortable. For oh we all love comfort.

What a snuggly little catch-22 we therefore find ourselves in: inconvenienced and convoluted by our inventory management, but fundamentally resistant to giving up the delightful pleasures and necessities that they bring.

The solution? A three-pronged attack.

Every year or so, I endeavour to get rid of half my stuff. I’ll go through everything, and if an item is not (a) absolutely essential to support some tenet of my life that I value, or (b) deeply loved, such that I would know if one day it just disappeared, then it goes. If you don’t truly love that jumper or look forward to wearing that pair of shorts, then get rid.

The second prong consists of having places for things and knowing exactly where you usually keep them. On the AT, everything in my pack had an absolute place. I could navigate it blind, see it fully in my mind’s eye, and knew always where everything was. And I’d always then do a sweep before packing up and moving on.

The third prong is how we respond to loss. Last night when packing, I realised I might have lost my passport. I need it for the flight I’m working on Friday, and I have not a Scooby of where it could be. Maddening. I cannot remember when I last had it, and I do not recall seeing it when I reorganised my entire room last weekend. Oh well. It will turn up, or maybe it won’t.

Stay calm, sit in a dark room, and wait for the image of the lost thing’s location to present itself. Lost things almost always turn up exactly where you last left them. And if it doesn’t? Well, just buy a new one. And if you can’t? Then remind yourself that your attachment to it really is no more than an idea and that some day none of this will matter at all.

The time spent panicking and worrying never helps, nor does calling yourself a dickhead. “Because through love [even for yourself] comes calm, and through calm comes thought. And you need thought to detect things sometimes, Jason”.

Love, then calm, then thought. And then? And then maybe you will find all that you were ever missing.