Wild search

My mother and brother spent most of the day sorting through some boxes in the garage in search of a couple of small yet important badges. They brought a few boxes inside the house, repacked them while looking for the badges, and then returned them to the garage when they were done; they also cleaned up the mess in the garage...a task that should have been done months ago.

Despite the search and the sorting, the badges were nowhere to be found. By the late afternoon they were both tired from their work, and although they had not found the badges they were both pleased at the garage now being at its tidiest in several months.

When they came back indoors, a thought suddenly crossed my brother's mind: he looked in a drawer in the living room and...voila! There were the missing badges! They had been in an obvious place for ages, yet no one had thought to look in that drawer until that moment. Both my mother and my brother were relieved that the badges had now been found, and neither of them had any regrets spending a significant portion of the day in the garage (it was, after all, much tidier now).

So, to summarise: we have a tidy garage, a few re-sorted boxes, and the badges have been found. An overall net positive result.