APAD: "Out of sight out of mind"

The idiomatic phrase “out of sight, out of mind” is a popular idiom used to express the idea that if something (or someone) is not visible or present, it's easily forgotten about or even purposely ignored.   We do it all the time with things/people we can't deal with or stuff that we want to put off until another time.

The phrase can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who wrote that “memory is the residue of thought.” He said what we remember boils down to what we pay attention to, and if something isn't directly in front of us, then we probably won't remember it.
 

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I too had 1st hand experience of "out of sight".  

When I was young and living at home with my parents, every few weeks, Mom would call for a family cleaning day.  Dad was always the one responding and doing it (although he didn't do any other house chores).

But he just pushed and hid all the loose things away out of sight to be done with it, so he could go back to his books.  And soon enough we would have problems finding our shoes and socks in pairs, but found hats and gloves in the shoe cabinet ... ...