There are a lot of ways to keep your personal belongings safe. Some opt for banks and safety deposit boxes, others prefer personal safes. But there remains another option: hiding them.
There are reasons for and against every option. So if you’d prefer to hide your important items in secret, here are # of the most effective ways we’ve found to do it.
1: In the Freezer as “Food”
Generally speaking, whatever you’re storing, be it money, documents, or weapons, it can handle slightly below freezing Temperatures. So a standard freezer item container, such as a tub of ice cream, can be used as a storage container.
The fridge is a common and easily accessible location, allowing you to collect the items quickly, while keeping it as incognito as possible. For someone to find it, they’d need to meticulously search through your entire kitchen for the off chance that some food box contains the items.
2: Fake Books
You’ve likely seen this in movies or TV. Someone opens a book, revealing that the inside was hollowed out and contains special items. While a bit old-fashioned, it does work. If you use a book that you’d understandably own and place it on a bookshelf with other books, it will be pretty well hidden. We even wrote about how you can make one of these books properly.
If you don’t want to commit to destroying literature, you can have it store money and documents by slipping these items into the pages. Then you’d only need to grab the book and go when making an emergency exit.
3: A Shop Vac
We particularly like this one, because of the sheer volume of potential storage. An empty shop vac would fit in perfectly in a normal home and would store more than you’d need to hide.
The only catch is that you both need to communicate this with family to not accidentally use that shop vac, and to not store it beside your actual shop vac. One shop vac fits in, two beside each other is a little suspicious.
4: The Back or Underside of Drawers
There are drawers all over a home, whether its the kitchen, bedroom, or study. While it’s not a very hidden location, it comes with a convenient coating of mystery. You could tape down an envelope with money or documents to the underside of a drawer, where it will easily be missed, even if being intentionally looked for. This goes double for the backside, where there is less “space,” but is less convenient to access, adding security.
The only problem is whether the one searching for secrets is rough and reckless enough. If they pull the entire drawer out and toss it around, they could easily discover the hidden envelope. If they’re just a robber, they won’t likely go this far and would just pull the drawers open looking for valuables.
5: Paint Cans
Literally every abode will have paint cans stored away in some corner. A room needs to be painted, and you need to keep the leftover paint in case you need to patch up a scuff or something. If, instead, these cans are dried out and free of paint, they can then store items inside. When properly sealed, these containers will be waterproof, which is an added bonus, but it will also hide very well in a storage or shed location.
Bonus: NOT in a Toilet Tank
This is another popular spot. Out of the way, unseen, and sizable. But there remains one problem: they’re too rare. Homes can have as few as a single toilet. And this hiding spot is tremendously known of thanks to film and media. If someone is looking for something hidden, they will likely think to look there. And since toilets are so easy to find in a home, it wouldn’t take them long to check all of them.
Granted, the effectiveness of all of these locations depend on both the intention of the person invading and searching, and if they know that you hide things. A run-of-the-mill burglar will likely not think that you’re that paranoid and look for obvious things like dresser-top jewelry and end-table electronics. They won’t be rummaging through your freezer for birth certificates. If, however, you have some rough people after you and they want something important or specific, they’ll do a much more thorough job of raiding you home. But let’s be real, that last scenario is nearly entirely fictional and not something most people have to be worried about.