Thinking like a Home Burglar: Hiding Valuables in Plain Sight
Concealing Prized Possessions Safely within Your Domicile: Methods for Stealthy Storage
Worried about valuable items being swiped by burglars? Thinking like a burglar can help protect your home and your valuables. This guide provides several strategies for safe and unique hiding places using common household objects.
Understanding the Burglar's Mindset
To deter burglars, it helps to know what they're looking for and how they operate. Burglars are mainly motivated by getting as much stuff as possible in the shortest time. They're about opportunities, flexibility, and stealth.
Valuables in Burglars' Sight
Small valuables are the most attractive to burglars due to their ease of transport. They're most likely to go after cash, jewelry, small electronics, firearms, designer bags, and passports.
Hiding Spots to Avoid
Master bedrooms are the most likely spots for burglars to hit first. Additionally, cliché hiding places like under the mattress, in the sock drawer, and behind the picture frames are standard checks for burglars.
Deceiving Burglars with Decoy Items
Leaving a small amount of cash or an inexpensive (yet valuable) piece of jewelry out in the open could trick burglars into thinking they've found everything, even if your real valuables are stashed somewhere else.
Hollowing Out Items
Hide small items and cash by cutting square openings through the pages of a hardcover book, using a deck of cards, or creating a false bottom in common household items such as plant pots, purses, or trash cans.
Adapting Furniture and Fittings
Attach valuables to the underside of drawers, slide envelopes into empty spaces in furniture, or set up hidden compartments in electronic panels.
Using Everyday Mundane Items
Store valuables in picture frames, toys, books, rice or cereal boxes, or even the trash can to throw burglars off the scent.
Keeping a Safe
Invest in a steel safe no less than 1/2-inch thick to protect your valuables from burglary and fire/water damage. Secure it to the floor to prevent theft, and consider storing important documents inside.
Protecting Your Valuables and Yourself
- Set up a home security system with cameras and motion lights.
- Hide valuables from view to deter burglars.
- Place cameras and motion lights outside your home.
- Have neighbors bring packages inside when you're away.
- Place lights on a timer when you're not home.
- Leave valuables with trusted friends or neighbors when traveling.
Essential Insights
- Diversion safes: Look for household items designed to look like everyday objects but have hidden compartments, such as bamboo soap dispensers or flower pot diversion safes.
- False outlets: These look like standard outlets but contain hidden compartments for small items.
- False bottom drawers: Add a thin false bottom to a drawer to create a hidden compartment.
- Magnetic containers: Use magnetic containers that can be stuck to metal objects like shelves or appliances for discreet hiding spots.
- Luoban Lubricant Can Safe: This unusual safe claims to have a smell-proof bag for added discretion and can be easily hidden in garages or workshops.
- Under cabinets: Utilize magnets to hide small items under recessed cabinets, a spot that burglars often overlook.
Here are two sentences from the given text:
- Using everyday mundane items such as picture frames, toys, books, rice or cereal boxes, or even the trash can can help in deceiving burglars and hiding valuables from their sight.
- To ensure the security of valuables from burglary and fire/water damage, consider investing in a steel safe no less than 1/2-inch thick, and secure it to the floor to prevent theft, as suggested in the home-and-garden and lifestyle sections of the article.
