Inexpensive yet Effective Alternatives to a Home Safe

Not everybody can afford a safe to protect their valuables from burglars, curious children and snooping spouses. That does not mean that you are completely without affordable alternatives for keeping items safe, however. As long as you do not require the substantial space afforded by one of those expensive safes, you can pretty effectively keep hidden smaller things you consider to be for your eyes only. It may take a little more work than picking out a safe, but what you lose in time and effort you more than make up in money saved. Just keep in mind that these ideas for protecting small valuables are not nearly as likely to get past a professional burglar as they are household members or inexperienced home invaders.

Ceiling

Your ceiling may present an effective place to hide valuables from kids or roommates, but probably not particularly effective against those who make a living breaking into homes. Any room with the type of ceiling tile that can be lifted out of place offers space that can be exploited for hiding things from others. More advanced utilization of the ceiling as an alternative to a safe is installing phoney recessed lighting fixtures that actually camouflage your hiding place. You can explain away the lack of illumination with a story about faulty wiring. You may even get lucky if you are unlucky enough to be the victim of a break-in by fooling a thief or having the fake fixture be overlooked.

Top of the Door

This is where having an actually wooden door is much handier than a plastic door. Remove the door from its hinges and chisel a hole into the top big enough to hide valuables needing limited hiding space like jewelry or memory cards. A piece of matching wood can then be fitted over the hole to provide at least a little bit more protection against experienced thieves who might just casually run their fingers across the top.

Fireplace Logs

You can actually buy fake logs for the fireplace that are intended for secret storage of valuables, but experienced burglars are wise to these tricks. Very experienced burglars are also wise to actual wooden logs that have been hollowed out for use as storage of valuables, but most are probably more likely to overlook actual fireplace logs than the fake kind. Of course, the key here is that you remember to remove the hollowed log before firing things up. The more charred and used you make the log before hollowing it out for storage, the better your odds of it being overlooked.

Obsolete Video Game Consoles

If you gut the innards of an old video game console, you can fit valuables inside. The next step is to store the video game console in with a bunch of other junk that the typical thief is not likely to bother with. Fortunately, the market for video game consoles two generations back from the current is not exactly booming, so by themselves they don’t make a tempting target. When placed in amongst a bunch of other old stuff that are also not big sellers on the pawn market, you increase the odds that the typical thief won’t even bother wasting time on a closer look. Just try to make sure that gutted console unit weighs about the same after you hide your valuables as it would with the interior technology intact.