To celebrate the publication of my little stash project in Make: Volume 34, I’ve rounded up a pseudorandom smattering of some of my favorite secret hiding place posts from our online archives. Some of these link to Make: articles, some to outside content, and a few don’t link anywhere and are just included for inspiration. The sneaky state-of-the-art is always advancing—hopefully one of these secret compartments will drive you to new depths of deviousness!
A doortop stash may not be able to store a lot, but you are pretty much guaranteed that no one is going to find it. This tutorial was recently updated with a video to make it even easier for you to follow along. Link: Door Stash
This veeeeery devious concealment, which opens with a detachable magnetic clasp, is one of eight produced by design student Yi-Ting Ching as part of her Master’s thesis, “Secret Stash 2010.” Link: Plywood Secret Compartment
![How to sew a hidden pocket in a pair of pants or shorts. Great for hiding credit cards or cash. Link: How to Make an Easy Hidden Pocket[Instructables]](https://i0.wp.com/makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/secret-pocket1.jpg?w=209&h=173&ssl=1 "03/17: Easy Hidden Pocket, Instructables (link)")
How to sew a hidden pocket in a pair of pants or shorts. Great for hiding credit cards or cash. Link: How to Make an Easy Hidden Pocket[Instructables]
![Made a Cold War-era dead drop out of a bolt. Link: Cold War Dead Drop Bolt [Instrucables]](https://i0.wp.com/makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/hollow-spy-bolt1.jpg?w=210&h=174&ssl=1 "04/17: Dead Drop Device, Brian Dereu (link)")
Made a Cold War-era dead drop out of a bolt. Link: Cold War Dead Drop Bolt [Instrucables]
John Park uses a Dremel oscillating tool to create a hollowed-out secret book safe/stash. Link: Make a Secret Hollowed-out Book.
Recycle castoff books and turn them into this sneaky, decorative book safe. Link: Vintage Book Stash.
Derek “Deek” Diedricksen brings us a lo-fi, how-to way of hiding your cash and valuables with his junction box stash. Link: Junction Box Stash Spot – Tiny Yellow House.
Hide your mini fridge by cutting out a side of a cardboard box (the size will vary depending on the size of your fridge) and glue or tape the cardboard to the front. Now, what was once your fridge just looks like a storage box.
Create this very sneaky hidden remote that activates your garage door when you lift a soda cup in your car. Link: Secret Garage Door Remote.
![Hide your digital plans for world domination inside the walls of your lair with this phone jack USB data stash. Link: Hidden Phone Jack USB Storage [Instructables]](https://i0.wp.com/makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/hidden-usb-storage1.jpg?w=316&h=262&ssl=1 "11/17: Hidden Phone Jack USB Storage, Instructables (link)")
Hide your digital plans for world domination inside the walls of your lair with this phone jack USB data stash. Link: Hidden Phone Jack USB Storage [Instructables]
Turn a spent AA battery into a USB data stash with this little hack. Link: Weekend Project: Make a USBattery Data Stash
Unlock a secret compartment with magnetic chess pieces with this gorgeous homemade chess board. Link: Secret Chessboard Compartment.
A Portland contractor builds a secret playroom behind an armoire destined to launch a thousand Narnia jokes. Link: Secret Playroom Access Through Armoire
If you want to go completely nuts with secret rooms in your house, you may need to call in a hidden passageway consult. Yes, they exist. Check out Creative Home Engineering for all of your candlestick-controlled secret passageway needs.
Make a door disappear, literally into the woodwork. This video doesn’t give full instructions, but you a good idea of how to get started. The door has even been programmed to open at the push of a button (and there are other ways to open it). Link: Hidden Exterior Entrance Door.
This beautiful house didn’t have anywhere for the people to park. The bottom floor was essentially unused, so Beausoleil Architects came up with a unique garage idea. Theyput in a two-part door that perfectly matches the exterior of the house. More via this video.
For some additional secret compartment and hidden spaces projects, see our follow-up article 20 Secret Doors and Clever Hiding Places.
32 thoughts on “Seventeen Sneaky Secret Compartments”
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Great collection! #8 is genius and I’m coveting #14 and #15.
one of the first things robbers go for are books, people been hiding money in books since the paper money was invented.
And if they can guess which of my nine bazillion books the loot is hiding it, I guess it is theirs.
Seriously – they would be better off getting a full-time job and working for the money rather then sifting through my large and scattered book collection.
I’m sure Ariel Castro has some good ideas too!
Sounds like something Ariel Castro would say.
How did you know :-) ?
these are amazinag hiding places
When I lived on a caribbean island where there was an ex-pat home burglary problem I would need to hide my electronics and small valuables when not at home. Where I lived there was a belief amongst the ex-pats that having a home safe invites break-ins because locals think anyone who has a safe must have stacks of cash/bags of jewels/gold bars/etc — so we didn’t have a safe.
What I did was to take common product packaging like the big plastic two gallon container of liquid laundry soap, cut a hole in the back (when the bottle was emptied) then hide cameras, ipods, etc on the shelf alongside the other cleaning supplies. I also used the gallon screw-top plastic containers that hold chlorine pucks (used in our well) which I would store alongside all the other water chemicals in the locked pump room.
There are two downsides — if you have domestic help (which is likely) you don’t want them finding your adulterated containers in case they tell someone else. You also need to pick products that either aren’t valuable enough to steal, or are too heavy to think about stealing. For example, during one burglary the thieves stole some packaged food items. If we had hidden the camera in a cracker or cereal box they might have found it while rifling through the food cupboard. Laundry soap and chlorine pucks are perfect containers because those products are too heavy or won’t be consumed by the thieves themselves. (We also had our beer stolen along with some jewelry one time — the beer they drank, the necklaces they probably sold).
We also used to hide bigger items underneath the sink or in the linen closet with the towels and sheets. The worry with the sink cabinets is that if the plumbing failed (a shockingly too common occurrence) then your laptop would be flooded too.
most of these look like geocaches.
I don’t see the 17 ideas – is this webpage discussing an article printed in the magazine or am I just looking in the wrong place on the site?
Just click “View All” under the first photo.
Laid out pretty poorly – why would you have names and links below the pictures, closer to the next item than it is to the item its describing?
#14 is creepy as f**k
#15, tip-up stairway.
I am so happy to see someone has finally done this! Does anyone remember the Mechanical Age in Myst, which had those two sets of stairs which were flush with the floor and then dropped down –
http://cdn-blog-assets.bigfishsites.com/Walkthroughs/realMyst/realmyst032.jpg
http://cdn-blog-assets.bigfishsites.com/Walkthroughs/realMyst/realmyst035.jpg
I loved them at the time ;-)
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Hide-a-fridge – perfect for keeping your friends away from your home made beer!
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An interesting tidbit: Due to the Titanic disaster of 1912, all
ships were required to have radios with 2 operators and auxiliary power and all transmitters must
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The ply-wood secret compartment looks really well done. I can’t see no other use for these unless your up to no good. Good for stashing cash and errrrrm drugs if your in to that lol.
Reblogged this on Denver Mini Maker Faire.
Links? None of these links seem to work.
Unfortunately, the links in this post broke when we changed things in the back end. If you are interested, I recently created a new post with some of the listed projects plus some additional ones. https://makezine.com/2015/06/17/20-secret-doors-clever-hiding-places/
Ah, thank you very much! The new post has several of the same ones I wanted to view the links to.
I have gone through and re-found and restored all of the broken links.
huzzah! Thank you Gar
It took me almost all day. I updated all of the posts it links to as well. Since it was getting so much traffic, I figured I’d try and bring it back to life.