Secret Hiding Places In Your Home

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.

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.

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.

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.