You think its better to have a situation where you can't find where something is, nor even approximate it, but you can generally approximate when something is, and grope around it? Because I don't think thats the case - if you can't remember where you put it, its not helpful to grope around the location of where you think you might've put it - or at least, lets say this: it might be more helpful to group around time, than space, when dealing with abstract ideas.

A user interface can be derived to help you do that groping with Time. User interfaces have been derived to help you do groping with form or place (Spotlight, cf.), too, but I wager Time-groping is more effective. But that could just be the musician in me...