My girlfriend and kid put google eyes on EVERY SINGLE ITEM in the bathroom while I was at work. Every item in every drawer, in the shower, all the stuff under the sink, the toothpaste....everything. my comb has googly eyes on it. The entire bathroom can stare at me.
Car companies do, people have brain circuits specifically for recognizing faces and they exploit that to get peoples attention. Amlost every car has a face if you look closely at the front, its not an accident the headlights look like eyes and fender a mouth. A good tip to not loose things is to put faces on them.
Different bright colors is also a great way to tell between different sized tools like a set of Allen keys and wrenches from a glance and associate a size to a particular color instead of looking for markings on the tool. I go out of my way to get colored sets now