Let's imagine for a moment that we have a stack of $100 bills that we want to stash somewhere in a house. Where is the best possible spot for hiding valuables? And, by the same token, what are the worst possible places to hide valuables?
Let's start by discussing the places we should avoid squirreling away our mythical $100 bills at all costs. First up is just about anywhere in the master bedroom. Many people feel safer when hiding valuables in the master bedroom, where they are close by when you sleep. But this psychological reasoning is misleading.
In reality, the master bedroom is the first place any competent thief will check for goodies. The dresser drawers will be emptied onto the floor. The nightstands will be rifled through. Anything under the bed (or mattress) will easily be discovered. Closets will be thoroughly ransacked. Even your dirty laundry hamper will be violated! Nothing in the master bedroom will be left untouched.
The bathroom, particularly the master bathroom, is another place not to stash your treasures. This wasn't always the case. For example, the toilet tank used to be an unusual and crafty spot for hiding valuables (after putting them in a waterproof zip-lock bag or Tupperware container first, of course).
But then the prescription drug boom hit. Doctors began prescribing excessive amounts of opioid-based pain medications in the 1990s, like OxyContin, Vicodin and Percocet. Opioid-based medications are highly addictive, resulting in massive numbers of people getting hooked. And people who are hooked on opioids will do anything to get their next high.
This means that your bathrooms are now prime locations for enterprising burglars, many of whom are looking to score their next fix. The medicine cabinet will be thoroughly looted. It is quite possible that every single pill bottle will be checked out, just to make sure there isn't something worthwhile inside. And don't expect the bathroom vanity or toilet tank to escape unwanted attention either. Burglars have caught onto those old tricks by now.
The kitchen is another place for hiding valuables that isn't nearly as good as it once was. Wrapping up our theoretical wad of $100 bills in aluminum foil and sequestering it in the freezer is a classic example. Burglars know about this hiding place. It’s the same thing with dumping valuables into an empty coffee can or other food container. Today's burglars spend a surprising amount of time pillaging the kitchen. They have even been known to take the time to make themselves a sandwich from your fridge!
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Basically, if you're hiding valuables in your kitchen and anything looks even the least bit out of place at all, a burglar will check it out. In addition to burglary, there is always the risk that a family member will accidentally throw out your valuables, not realizing what they are! This nightmare scenario has happened to well-meaning people before, and will undoubtedly happen again.
Now that we've covered the worst places for hiding valuables, what about the best places to stash your treasures? I think that in order to answer this question we need to understand the Triangle of Security. As the graphic at the top of this article illustrates, the Triangle of Security has three points: security, concealment and convenience.
Security is the difficulty of accessing an item. A high-security safe that has been bolted to the floor is a great example of good security. Even if a thief knows exactly where this safe is located, it would still take him a long time to break into it. Good quality door and window locks also fall under the security category, as do alarms and security cameras.
Convenience is the ease with which an item can be accessed. For instance, it would be very convenient to hide our stack of $100 bills in a sock drawer. We could easily get to the money at anytime with no trouble at all. But then again, so could just about anyone else!
Concealment is how well hidden an item is. If we were to make a hidden compartment in-between the wooden joists in our attic, it would be very difficult to find. It would be highly unlikely that a thief would take the time to scour such a remote and unusual place for valuables.
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Now here is the big secret to hiding valuables in your home: the three parameters of the Triangle of Security - security, convenience and concealment - are somewhat mutually exclusive. It is possible to attain any two points in the Triangle of Security, but the third will always remain elusive. In other words, if you want your valuables to be conveniently accessible, it usually means you have to sacrifice either concealment or security. Likewise, excellent security usually means that either convenience or concealment is lost to some extent. The same rule holds true for concealment.
So I think it is important to consult the Triangle of Security and decide which criterion is most (or least) important to you. If you're hiding valuables that you don't intend to access every day, then it might be alright to give up some convenience. In this case, a high-security floor safe installed into the concrete slab in your basement might be the way to go. Floor safes are easy to conceal (not many burglars take the time to explore the basement) and very secure. But you have to get on your hands and knees to use them, so they are not very easy to access.
If you're shooting for maximum concealment, there are hollow books, false wall outlets, air vents and even hiding spots carved into door frames! These are generally going to be fairly convenient to use, but don't believe for a moment that they are secure. If word somehow gets out that your leather-bound edition of Moby Dick is actually your weed stash, then you can expect it to disappear in short order!
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If you want maximum convenience, a TL-30 rated burglary safe with a digital lock in a master bedroom closet would be very easy to access. It would also be very secure, provided it was properly installed. It could even have great fire resistance. But a large, high-security safe would be almost impossible to camouflage convincingly.
Of course, it is possible to somewhat balance security, concealment and convenience when hiding valuables. I like wall safes for this application. They are fairly easy to conceal in a closet, behind a dummy electrical panel or behind a painting or other wall art. Models with digital locks can be accessed quickly for maximum convenience. And if discovered, a wall safe will still provide a fair amount of security against smash-and-grab thieves and other amateur burglars.
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