I’ve told this story before, but when we were cleaning out mom’s apartment after she passed away, we were constantly asking each other “Do we need to keep this?” before throwing anything in the trash. At one point my sister-in-law was getting ready to toss an empty box that had held an ornamental piece of Waterford crystal. When she asked if we needed to keep the box, it jogged my sister’s memory. She took the box and opened it up and pulled the foam padding out of the bottom, and there was about $400-500 in twenties stashed in the bottom.
(She also did the hiding money in books thing, but all of that money had been recovered when she moved out of her house to the apartment.)
Hide the key next to a wasp nest. No one is going to look there. Of course if you need the key then you have to deal with the wasps, but hey, it’s secure.
I stopped keeping hardcopy manuals last year when I realized I could download PDF files. It was a happy revelation, because over the years the file drawer that held the paper manuals had become full to overflowing. For stuff bought online, I have electronic purchase records. As far as paper receipts, I only keep those for high-dollar items.
Somewhere in our files, we have a sheet of login credentials for the bazillion websites that we are registered on. No rational place, just a specific spot in a specific folder full of other crap that only we know where it is. So yes, this is the security-through-obscurity thing.
For a housekey:
At my parents’ old house, they had a sunporch on the back of the house, with a crawlspace that was maybe 4.5 feet tall. The crawlspace was enclosed, with a sliding window. The spare key to the front door of the house was kept in there, hanging on a nail on the far side of the third stud from the right side of the window.
I’m not telling you where the spare key is for our current house.
I used to hide cash in the battery compartment of a portable radio/8 track player that I always had plugged in.
Now, I have a safe in my closet. Much more practical. If I had the ambition, there are 4 holes in the bottom of the safe that you could put lag bolts through and screw to the floor. Hiding in many random spots means you’re going to forget some of them. Get a safe, open a savings account, or get a safe deposit box.
I was taking about dusting the key with a bit of paint to make it less reflective. Beside that, after the key has been hanging there a while it will take on a bit of patina and no dulling paint is necessary.
We’ve used the “key in the tree” method for securing the family vacation cabin for decades. Goobering up the lock with bits of paint has never been an issue. That old lock needs a shot of WD40 every now and then anyway.
It seems to me the omitted stage here is the explicit writing down of the exact location, instructions, codewords that allow access to the hiding places, without which much of the tragic-comical elements ensue. I would (and should) write myself an email (with copies to trusted parties) describing what I have hidden and where it is and what they need to do to unearth my hiding spot. Just yesterday I found $400 I had secreted in the pouch I keep my passports in–I knew the passports were there, but had forgotten completely the $400. In fact (this is embarrassing) I can’t remember 24 hours later if I left the $400 there or if I put it in my wallet. I think I just left it there, but am not 100% sure. I need to jot these things down. What are the chances that someone would be able to break into my house AND my email? Not very large, I’d think.
If we’re talking about spare keys now…My house has 3 doors to get in. I two of them alike and the third one, which is very rarely used, I keyed the same as my parent’s house. Granted, it might make it a PITA if I’m locked out in the middle of the night, but if I get home from work at 3 in the afternoon and can’t get in, it’s no big deal.
And, for the first few years that it was like that, I didn’t even tell them.
And before anyone says it, if they’re not home, I know where their spare key is hidden, so I could grab that and if they ever want their locks changed, they’ll almost certainly ask me to do it.
Also, I have an attached garage and have a spare key for the door between the garage and house hidden inside the garage. As long as I have my garage door opener on me (or I’m willing to break through service door), I can still get into the house.
They might be good for those people want first responders to be able to easily get into the house. You could give them the numpad code rather than ask them to look for a hidden key.
I replaced my door locks with these 10 years ago. What a relief. Plus if my kids forget to lock the door when they leave, the doors relock themselves after 30 seconds.
I have a realtor’s box on the doorknob of the back door. The key inside doesn’t open anything, but it will delay anyone trying to get in. If one were to discover, say, a key under the doormat at another door, they’d be delighted to discover it fit the knob right in front of them. They’d be less happy upon discovering it’s a false knob that merely turns without actuating anything.
Our house has been upgraded to be far more intrusion-resistant than a typical dwelling. As such, getting locked out would be a substantial (and expensive) PITA. So there is a complicated, multi-step way to get inside sans keys, but it requires knowing so many locations, items, and codes, the likelihood of an intruder randomly discovering this is zero.
One of the times someone smashed in the back door at my work to rob the place, someone came up with a bunch of ideas on how to reinforce the door. While it’s not a bad idea, I had to remind him, if you go overboard with that, they’ll break a window. You could brick over all the windows and (and I mean this literally) you could cut a hole in the side of the building with sawzall in about 2 minutes. If someone wants to get in and they’re not concerned about property damage, they’re going to get in.
You see them all over the place here in NYC. People get one, put a spare key in it, and lock it to a fence or something a couple of blocks from their apartment. There’s no way to trace it back to the owner or any particular apartment, so it’s safe.
I don’t anymore, because now I live in a building with a doorman, and the building staff has spare keys for everyone (or at least everyone who gives them a spare key), but it’s a pretty popular spare key solution.
I like that! If in a house, you could set up a agreement with your neighbors, such that mine is on your door, yours is with B, B’s with C, and I have C’s. A determined thief could work it out, but in that case she could just kick in the back door anyway.
I actually have a key box on my front door (not sure which previous owner installed it) - no key in it, but I do know the combination if I ever wanted to put one there for someone.
It’s safe until the owner of the fence has the box cut off. At the condominium complex where I live, so many realtors used a fence here to store keys for the units they represented that the condo management issued an deadline for removing them from the fence or they’d be cut off. The fence did start looking like that place in Paris where everyone adds a lock. Nothing there now.
On the one hand, I’d be worried that someone would break into it assuming it’s the key for the house it’s in front of. OTOH, if it’s common enough in your area that any random person walking by it would know what’s going on…you could just attach it to your own fence and people would assume it’s for some other house.
But again, keep in mind, those key locks are really, really easy to open. In some (many) cases it’s little more than putting some tension on the shackle and spinning the wheels.
No doubt. But as a backup for a lost apartment key, especially if one lives alone, it’s worth a try. The key and key safe can’t be traced back to any apartment or building in particular, so it’s safe, at least.
My favorite part of this thread has been imagining someone (the OP, perhaps) checking this thread. Every time someone comes up with a new “I hide my _____ behind the ______” post, it gets added to the long list titled “Places Already Thought Of”…
Or the list-maker is getting increasingly agitated as he scratches his options off the “Good Hiding Places” list… as he stares at his pile of gold doubloons sitting on the kitchen table.