Never Lose Your Keys Again: a Tile Review

Picture the scene: my house, every morning, the time we should be leaving for the school run (or, if I’m honest, 3 minutes after this time), running around the house like a headless chicken, trying to get everyone ready.

It never seems to get easier, this process of leaving the house with kids. Eight and a half years down the line, eight and a half years of experience leaving the house with two little people and it’s still a total nightmare. I’m still stationed in the hallway, last-minute parroting “Teeth! Shoes! Bags! Now” at the kids, much like I have always done ever since they were old enough to toddle out the front door.

One thing that makes this process slightly more complicated is the fact that, upon the stage we’re actually ready to leave the house, I can never bloody find my keys. No matter what I do I seem incapable of keeping hold of my house and car keys: both, if I’m really unlucky.

At times it’s been farcical, the lack of control I seem to have over my keys.

I lost them for good one night back in 2010 when Huxley was a newborn, on a night out with a friend in Camden. I’m not saying it was a contributing factor to my divorce but my then-husband was not impressed: car keys are expensive and I felt like a total tool for dropping mine somewhere between the Hawley Arms and Edinburgh Castle – they were never located – and I could have done with reading this Tile review years ago.

Back to present day and those car keys are still slippery little suckers. I have two of them – the spare has somehow made its way into daily rotation, probably because the actual key is always lost – and I can never bloody find either of them. You see, I have one of those magic cars that you only need stand next to with your key and it unlocks: convenient at the time, sure, but it also means I always have a plethory of keys strewn in different locations around the house. Coat pockets, handbags, in my jeans… you name it, I’ve found a car key there in a mad panic five minutes after we should have left for school.

Tile Review

Enter: a Tile review! The answer to all your lost belonging worries!

But what is a Tile, I hear you ask?

Good question. A Tile is a nifty little gadget that you attach to the things most important to you (KEYS! Wallet! Teddy bear! Sanity!), link with your phone via a Bluetooth app and Bob’s your uncle, you’ll never lose your belongings again (I wish I could say the same for your sanity).

At that moment you can’t find your keys when you’re leaving the house, it’s simple: you just ‘ring’ whatever it is that you’ve lost. And lo and behold, your keys will play a (loud) ditty from whichever bag/coat pocket/duvet (has happened) they’ve wedged their way into.

I’ve had my Tile almost a week and – embarrassingly – I’ve used it every day in the panic to leave the house. Which, although demonstrates my absolute inability to exit our home on my own and on time with a set of keys in-hand, means I’ve had much less stress to content with on the school run.

It also works in the opposite way too, if you’re one of those people who also loses their phones (and who isn’t?). Press the button on the Tile device and your phone will play a tune to help you find it – even if it’s on silent. Genius!

Tile doesn’t just work in the home: it utilises its network to operate out in the big wide world as well. For example, if you were silly enough to drop your keys somewhere on a night out in Camden (ahem), you could activate Community Find, meaning anyone who has the Tile app is anonymously on the lookout and if they come within range of your keys, Tile will let the you know where they are. Genius!

You can buy a few different versions of the gadget, which I’ve been trialling for this Tile Review. There’s Tile’s newest replaceable battery trackers Tile Mate, at £20, with a radius of 45m, and the Tile Pro (£50 for 2) which has a larger 90m radius – these both attach on to your keys or can be slipped in a handbag. Then there’s the Tile Slim which, at £30, is the perfect shape and size to be slipped into a wallet – visit their website to take a look at the range.

You’ll never lose your belongings again!

Thanks to Tile for working with MTT on this review.