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Cat in a doorway, Venice 2001. First time we ever took a camera on a trip, we took pictures of cats. They’re always cooperative.

You’re sitting at your desk in your office at home. Digging for something under a stack of papers, you find a dirty coffee mug that’s been there so long it’s eligible for carbon dating. Better wash it. You pick up the mug, walk out the door of your office, and head toward the kitchen. By the time you get to the kitchen, though, you’ve forgotten why you stood up in the first place, and you wander back to your office, feeling a little confused—until you look down and see the cup.

So there’s the thing we know best: The common and annoying experience of arriving somewhere only to realize you’ve forgotten what you went there to do. We all know why such forgetting happens: we didn’t pay enough attention, or too much time passed, or it just wasn’t important enough. But a “completely different” idea comes from a team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame. The first part of their paper’s title sums it up: “Walking through doorways causes forgetting.”

Doorway of the dinky hotel we stayed in, Venice 2001. The padlock on our suitcase was broken and the clerk lent us a bolt cutter without blinking.

Don’t walk through a doorway, read Scientists measure the doorway effect in Scientific American.