Secret Hiding Places In Your Home

Maybe it's jewelry, maybe it's cash, maybe it's just a bag of M&Ms you want to eat all by yourself. But we all have something we want to tuck safely out of sight. We asked our readers to share their best hiding places, and share them they did! Of course, we omitted their names to protect their secrets. So read on, pick your favorites, invent your own— and keep those crooks guessing!

Floating shelves are beautiful and easy to build. With a little extra effort and a few bucks more, you could build yours with a hidden compartment.

Slice open a tennis ball and you've got yourself a little vault just like those rubber squeeze coin purses from the '70s. Don't store the ball in the garage with the other balls or it could get tossed across the yard for your dog.

Having several hiding places makes sense...unless you forget where they are! Avoid this misfortune by making yourself a map of your various treasure sites. That way you only need to remember one location—the place where you hid the map. Want more? Check out these 50 extraordinary uses for ordinary things in your home.

Some shoes have a removable sock liner (the foam pad your foot rests on). Pull out the sock liner and slide in some cash. What thief is going to want to dismantle your stinky shoes? This is also a good place to hide emergency cash on your person while you're on vacation unless, your sneakers are nice enough that someone would want to steal them too. Learn how to build a shoe rack here.

Prepare for the worst, and make sure your goodies are not lost forever by including all your hidey-hole locations in your will.

Nobody ever looks at those old photo albums, but they never get thrown away either. That's why they're the ideal place to store a little emergency cash.

I always keep a spare key hidden somewhere on my vehicle. I don't use a magnetic key box because it can fall off, and it's not easy to find a place big enough to stick them to mostly plastic modern cars. Instead, I bolted my spare key to a magnet, the kind with metal on one side and a hole in the middle. It fits perfectly in a little nook near my rear bumper, and it's been there for years without falling off.

Many ironing boards have tubular legs with plastic caps on them. Pull the cap and you've got yourself a perfect little hidey-hole. I slide in a wad of paper towels first so my secret stays near the opening and doesn't rattle around.

I like to stash my treasures above the suspended ceiling tiles in my basement. At that height, would-be thieves can't get at them without a ladder. Keep your goodies in a plastic container to protect them from bandits of the rodent variety. And don't stash anything heavy that could cause a ceiling tile to sag.

If you have an irrigation system, install a phony pop-up sprinkler head near the front door and hide a key in it. You could dismantle an extra sprinkler head or buy a fake one designed to hold a key. They cost less than $5 at home centers and discount stores.

It takes hours, not days, for my younger kids to lose their house keys. My solution was to install a remote keypad for the garage door opener. That worked great until one day we lost power and my 12-year-old son was left out in the cold ... literally. I discovered that my key fit right behind the nine-volt battery inside the keypad. A key in a keypad—now that's ironic.

There are tons of ways to hide stuff in a kitchen cabinet. Bury a zipper-top bag full of jewelry at the bottom of a half-full oatmeal box. Open a cereal box at the bottom and shove in some cash. (Pick a healthy cereal that no one will touch.) A "smooth-edge" can opener cuts through the top in such a way that the top often fits snugly back in place. Plus: These inside-the-cabinet storage ideas will help organize your everyday kitchen items.

Stick a flat box of tissues in a full-size tissue box holder and you've just created a convenient little hiding spot. You could buy a one-size-fits-all box like this, or a regular box holder and set the box of tissues on a couple of blocks. The box shown is made by PandPal and costs around $23 online.

It's a good idea to protect your valuables in a fireproof safe. The problem is that these smaller safes are as easy to grab as a briefcase; some even have a handle on them. I hide my safe in a suitcase.

I keep a list of my passwords on a sheet of paper near my computer. I protect my list from bad guys and nosy coworkers by putting it in a file folder. I lay the folder flat on the bottom of a file cabinet drawer under the other hanging folders. For an extra level of security, you could label the file "Proctology Exam Results" or some other title to ward off prying eyes.