It is a priority for everyone to keep the valuables they have in their home safe. No one wants to come home or wake-up and find their most precious items gone, stolen or destroyed; and the security concerns when securing your home will greatly differ from
security considerations of commercial property owners.
As you are probably aware, burglary is often unplanned and spontaneous and is typically considered a crime of opportunity. Thieves rarely want to have to spend hours looking through your home for things to steal for fear of getting caught before getting away with anything.
They will know the obvious places to check and that is where they will go first, which is actually good news, as it means that you have an opportunity to outsmart those trying to break into your property and steal from you in the first place. You can aim to hide your valuables in not so obvious locations and, sometimes, even in plain sight. Important to remember is that
securing a vacant property is very different to securing the contents of an occupied one.
Where you choose to deposit your items will depend on their size. The best places to hide valuables are those which burglars do not want to search through or wouldn’t bother with, including hard to reach places, or in places which appear uninteresting, even messy.
Hollowed-Out Books for Valuables
In most cases, criminals tend to be uneducated, which is often why they have unfortunately turned to crime in order to make their living. Not only will they not think to look in books, but if you have plenty of them it will simply be too time consuming for them to search each one. It must be said, if you only have a few books then you may be at a higher risk of a thief checking them, so put the valuable in a book in a more populated place.
Fake Containers
You may wish to stash valuables in fake containers in places like kitchen cupboards, under the sink, fake food cans, false cleaning liquid bottles and in personal hygiene items. There are actually fake containers on the market for this very purpose. You can also choose to ‘DIY it’. Furthermore, some false containers on the market are quite obviously fake, so pick wisely or make your own.
You could also opt to put the values in a false bottom or under the plastic lining of a bathroom or a kitchen bin. No one is going to think to or want to go looking through your rubbish in the hope of finding something worth selling on.
Floor Safes
Why not try hiding your valuables in the floor; in a safe, in somewhere like your wardrobe? While this location may appear obvious, a burglar will know that they will not have enough time or skill to go through a bedroom wardrobe whilst you are sleeping inside that room. It would create a lot of commotion and a lot of noise to try and break into a safe on your wardrobe floor. You can purchase wardrobes which lock or you may choose to buy a lock for your wardrobe door from somewhere as simple as Amazon.
Safes are great as along with
a monitored alarm system, they greatly deter and hinder burglars from the very outset.
Inside a Houseplant
This is essentially the same idea as the bin suggestion. The plant’s soil is going to not only conceal the items, but it will act as deterrent as burglars are not going to spend time digging through your houseplants to find a quick buck, particularly if it contains a messy type of plant. You should put your valuables in a waterproof liner that can be lifted up through the soil, but conceal it well.
Hiding Places for Valuables to Avoid
It is all well and good knowing where is good to hide your valuables, but equally, there are various obvious hiding places that are well-established and may well be one of the first places a burglar will look. Over the years, homeowners have unfortunately needed to become cleverer and more creative due to rises in burglaries and home invasions. Where should you categorically avoid?
A Jewellery Box
Whist this clearly serves the purposes of storing and organising jewellery, you should choose to store the most valuable items elsewhere and reserve it for the jewellery that you can afford to lose, or simply hide the jewellery box with all of its contents altogether.
Draws and Dressers
There are certain draws which burglars often check and these include a bedside drawer, a desk draw and an underwear draw as these seem to be some of the most common places to keep the things most valuable to us. Similarly, a filing cabinet is also a bad place to keep things valuable to you. Many thieves will look in these as they know they will also likely hold important documents.
Jars and Household Containers
Jars which are obviously placed, such as a cookie jar or a sugar jar on the kitchen counter, should be reserved for their intended items and not your valuables. A lot of people tend to keep money in these, or even have very visible piggy banks which could not really serve any other purpose other than holding cash.
